THE NEXT VICTIM (1976)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

SPOILERS

A lot of the hour-long progarmmers on Brian Clemens' THRILLER emphasized mundane naturalistic psycho-killers. My only real reason for labeling this psycho as "uncanny" is because Clemens' script models him strongly after Norman Bates, with a "Lodger" touch or two worked in.

Rich lady Sandy Marshall (Carroll Baker) returns to the apartment she shares with her not-so-rich husband Derek. Sandy has been in the hospital recovering from a car crash, and she's still occupying a wheelchair, though her prognosis is that she will regain full mobility. Sandy's expecting just to pass the day quietly while Derek's gone on business. However, it's a hot summer day in London, and most of the locals have gone to the beach for the weekend. Unfortunately there's also a serial killer who's been preying on London women lately. The cops have one clue: a single prospective victim escaped the murderer, and she heard him refer to her as "mother."

A couple of cops get on the psycho's trail, and though they ferret out the correct suspect, they have no impact on Sandy's apartment ordeal. The killer gains entrance to the gated complex by pretending to be a delivery driver, and the camera's careful not to show his face at first-- though there's no mystery because there's only one suspect, aside from a briefly seen, creepy maintenance guy (Ronald Lacey).

Sandy doesn't hear from a neighbor when she expects to, which causes her to start worrying. Then in the near-deserted complex, Sandy encounters a handsome young guy named Tom (Max Mason). She appreciates his company at first, since he claims to be a resident. But eventually Tom seems "off" to Sandy, especially when he speaks of her car accident as highly improbable-- as if someone might have arranged it. And he also mentions that he served his wheelchair-bound mother for ten years, which seems to be his reason for wanting to hang out with Sandy.   

Clemens almost seems to be setting up Tom to be some amateur detective who (correctly) suspects Derek of being a wife-killer. So when Sandy knocks Tom over the head and tries to wheel away for her very life, Clemens seems to be leading the viewer to believe Tom's a good guy. But no, Tom's the Oedipal assailant, though Clemens, to keep his precious ambiguity, barely explicates Tom's psycho-profile. The beleaguered viewer can only presume that Tom targeted Sandy and meant to kill her but started seeing her as "good non-sexual mother" rather than the "bad sexual mothers" he believed his other victims to be. But as Sandy flees, she needs a new antagonist--so Deadly Derek comes back that same night to knock off Sandy and blame it on the psycho. He and Tom end up fighting over Sandy, and after both men die, the movie just ends, unceremoniously. Usually Clemens' THRILLER dramas are solid if unambitious melodramas-- but this one is just a jumbled botch.  

DEADLY SWEET (1967)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

First off, I've long heard the name of erotic filmmaker Tinto Brass, but have only seen a G-rated 1964 film he directed, THE FLYING SAUCER, which is probably not representative of his work. DEADLY SWEET, which also used the title I AM WHAT I AM, may not be any more so.  

Second, SWEET is a hard film to classify. The poster above calls SWEET "a sexy giallo thriller," but aside from the director/co-writer's use of garish color, there's not much here to tie the movie in with the giallos as they later developed. SWEET might be deemed to prefigure the way some later giallos combined psycho-horror with crime thrillers, and indeed this film frequently seems like a sendup of a crime thriller. The only metaphenomenal element is that of a perilous psycho, but Brass approaches the genre-element of "find the killer" with a studied indifference, underscored by two separate references either to director Michelangelo Antonioni or to that director's BLOW-UP from the previous year. Since that movie also concerned a crime that almost gets lost in the protagonist's experiences in the world of Swinging Sixties London, there can't be much doubt that Brass wanted attentive viewers to pick up on his emulations-- for all that BLOW-UP became an international sensation while SWEET was essentially forgotten.

POV character Bernard (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is an out-of-work actor in London, and he's not painted as the brightest bulb, given that he's given to dropping random quotes of persons as different as Lao Tsu and Mao Tse-tung. While in a disco-- where he's been cut off for failure to pay his bar tab-- he spies four well-known upper-class celebrities: blonde heiress Jane Burroughs (Ewa Aulin), her brother Jerome, her stepmother Martha, and an older man, Leris, rumored to be keeping company with Martha since her husband passed away. This sounds a lot like the sort of nuclear family constellation that makes for dramatic explosions, but unlike most giallos, family conflicts get lost in the shuffle.

Bernard drops in on the club's owner and finds the man dead, while in the same room is Jane, who immediately claims, "I didn't do it." Does Bernard do the sane thing and call the cops? No, he decides he's going to play detective (he even wears a trenchcoat during most of the film) and try to exonerate the waifish Jane. When she introduces herself, he responds to the name "Jane Burroughs" with "Me Tarzan," making clear that Bernard nurtures delusions of being a rescuing hero. And Jane seems content to let him squire her around the sights of Swinging London-- at least, until she's seized by kidnappers (one played by a very young David Prowse). Then Bernard has to start playing detective for real, eventually linking up with Brother Jerome to save Jane.

Though in many giallos the kidnappers would be related to the murder, here they seem to be nothing but mundane extortionists. Along the way Leris, the supposed lover of Martha, is also murdered, and toward the movie's conclusion-- amid lots of psychedelia, jump cuts, pop art imagery, and brief shifts from color to black-and-white-- Bernard finally gets around to interviewing Stepmother Martha. She promptly reveals that she wasn't the one Leris was dating on the sly, and Bernard learns that a hero should never trust a blonde waif, even after she lets said hero jump her bones.

Euro-comics master Guido Crepax is credited with having story-boarded SWEET, and most of the time the movie looks like an attempt to apply the sixties' pop art aesthetic to a whole motion picture. Pop art appears in many location backgrounds, including one Batman painting not known to me and one of Lichtenstein's famous "blow-ups" of a single romance-comics panel. In two different scenes violence is punctuated with quick "sound-effects" like "SLAM," a clear shout-out to '66 BATMAN, and Bernard also has a close encounter with Alfred E. Neumann. Even Jane's enigmatic line-- "I am what I am"-- might be derived from a certain salty sailor. I don't think Brass had any particular point to make with these citations, though, any more than his conjurations with the sixties music scene. Swinging London does at times seem to dissolve into a Dionysian chaos far from anything that Humphrey Bogart, or even Jean-Paul Belmondo, ever had to cope with. Thus I classify SWEET as an irony, in that the film depicts a world where even the story's Big Reveal doesn't make things any less chaotic.

                        

 

CHAMBER OF HORRORS (1966)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

"Jason Cravatte, a gentleman with a taste for the sewers..."

Before getting to the film proper, I'll spend some time remarking on the synchronicity of my reviewing, in the same month, two psycho-films I'd only seen once before, both of which could have been really good in their depiction of a common trope: "the Really Rich are Really Messed Up." The other one was A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES, and it shares with CHAMBER OF HORRORS the sense that the filmmakers of both weren't as devoted as they should've been to their psycho-subjects.

CHAMBER is credited to two writers, Stephen Kandel and Ray Russell, and a director, Hy Averback. Both Kandel and Averback were mostly journeymen laborers in the TV field, while Russell is best known for his short story "Mister Sardonicus," which gave rise to the William Castle film of the same name. My guess is that Russell, credited only with contributing to "story" rather than "screenplay," came up with the essence of the perilous psycho of CHAMBER-- which, even in its early origins, seems to have had some elements in common with Castle's other productions. Had Jason Cravatte been better elaborated, he could have been as good as Slade in THE LODGER.

We first see Cravatte (Patrick O'Neal) forcing a minister at gunpoint to marry him to a dead woman. Later, after the law has caught up with Cravatte, he escapes in such a way as to lose one hand. He then becomes a psycho-killer haunting the streets of 1880s Baltimore, but he's actually more interesting in the background provided by his aunt, Mrs. Perryman (Jeanette Nolan). The rich, fifty-something dowager informs the audience that despite the upper-class station of her nephew, he liked "the taste of the sewers" and apparently kept company with all manner of prostitutes (which is substantiated later when Cravatte's seen holed up in a whorehouse). If this was all there was to him, he'd just be a dime-a-dozen roue. But he also had some desire for a "madonna" as an antidote to the whores, because he courted blonde Melinda-- the dead woman seen at the opening-- in the belief that she was virginal. He killed her when he learned she was not pure, and yet he also had some notion that he "purified" her by killing her, for he seems to have every intention of taking his pleasure with her dead body. In addition, even after the madman's been condemned but escapes, he repeats this syndrome by paying a similar-looking prostitute to "play dead."

Unfortunately, the script doesn't follow the "madonna-whore" complex with any close attention. After Cravatte escapes the law and becomes "the Butcher of Baltimore"-- complete with various killing-devices he can fit into his empty wrist-socket-- he takes up a brand- new psycho-obsession. He starts killing off the men who sentenced him to the hangman, and out of nowhere there's some folderol about his forming a "composite corpse" of the body parts of his victims. This poorly conceived notion turns Cravatte into just another gimmick-oriented psycho-killer-- though Patrick O'Neal's rousing performance as Cravatte sustains the film through all its dull spots.

Now, although Cravatte is the Prime icon of CHAMBER OF HORRORS the film, he would not have been had CHAMBER succeeded in its original purpose, as a pilot for a TV-series, originally called "House of Wax" after the 1953 horror-film. If any of the networks had greenlighted "House" as a series, then the default stars of all the episodes would have been the characters Tony Draco (Cesare Danova) and Harold Blount (Wilfrid Hyde-White). These two amateur detectives-- whose backgrounds are spotty at best-- run a wax museum with the title "House of Wax," and unlike the one in the Vincent Price movie, all of their wax statues are devoted to murder and the macabre. Indeed, the script tends to suggest that Draco and Blount's fascination with the macabre-- presented as being benign, I guess like that of the pilot-makers-- is what makes them great detectives. Presumably they would have proved this again and again on a weekly basis. But though there was no series, CHAMBER still ends with the suggestion of another "episode" involving another bizarre murder.

Many reviewers have remarked on how little gore is present in a film about a psycho who frequently stabs people with his hand-utensils. Yet even without the gore, the concept was clearly too disturbing for the TV networks to accept. I speculate that the producers-- one of whom was director Averback-- were hoping to titillate TV audiences by frequently having Draco and Blount make speeches about all the horrible deeds performed by the subjects of their wax exhibits. This idea wouldn't have worked as a TV-show in a million years. But even with all the missteps in the pilot-movie-- enhanced with Castle-like gimmicks when CHAMBER went to theatres-- the Russell-Kandel provides some fun moments, albeit with a poky pace that made me appreciate William Castle's superior narrative drive. 

Next-to-lastly, while CHAMBER's script isn't interested in the opposition between "serene beauty and titillating shocks" established in Crane Wilbur's HOUSE OF WAX script, Averback et al did offer another form of enticement. Aside from the first female victim, only one feminine character is strictly necessary to the script: that of Marie (Laura Devon), a bargirl whom Cravatte makes into his partner, mostly so that she can seduce one of his victims, a horny old trial judge, and then lure the old duffer into a trap. But the script also works in technically unnecessary roles for glamorous actresses like Patrice Wynore and Suzy Parker, as well as several briefly-seen young working-women. (At times CHAMBER almost seems to anticipate how the Italian giallos developed in the early 1970s.) This strategy was doubtless meant to suggest that ladies- man Draco would have a girl to seduce every week had CHAMBER become a series. Indeed, the theatrical movie even gives some exposure to past-their-prime beauties like Nolan and Marie Windsor-- though Nolan steals the show, making clear that her side of the family is just as lubricious as that of Cravatte's paternal line.

Two other last things: first, thanks to a spectacular fight between Cravatte and Draco at the conclusion, CHAMBER, like HOUSE OF WAX, qualifies as a combative drama. Second, right around the time Hy Averback completed the pilot-movie, he became executive producer for the slapstick teleseries F TROOP, which certainly seems to have been much more up his alley.

  

   

                              

SINTHIA THE DEVIL'S DOLL (1970)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Intellectually, I know that SINTHIA THE DEVIL'S DOLL looks like the bastard child of Ingmar Bergman and Kenneth Angar-- and only if said bastard was chained in a basement during its formative years. Still, I like it better than any of Ray Dennis Steckler's other movies, probably because I never thought he took any chances in his other endeavors. Steckler's films always just lurch from one incoherent incident to another, with barely any plot or character, and SINTHIA is no exception. But when Steckler produced this psycho-nudie for the grindhouse theaters, he did make the attempt to emulate the look of a hallucinatory arthouse-movie and even used the pseudonym "Sven Christian" to gull patrons into thinking he might be some sort of Swedish artiste. Yet the grindhouse distributors of the era didn't care about films as art, only how much female skin was on display. Maybe Steckler saw some art-movie that made him want to do better than his usual tripe. That he wasn't capable of producing even above-average sexploitation is a shame, but I still find SINTHIA an interesting failure.

Although Steckler had directed one previous psycho-film, 1964's THE THRILL KILLERS, and would direct at least two more following SINTHIA, the 1970 film doesn't involve the sort of physical perils typical of most psycho-killer movies. The title character doesn't even seem to be in danger of harming herself, except in the metaphysical sense of needing to atone for past crimes. We only know two things about Sinthia (portrayed by two-time actress Shula Roan), and Steckler tediously repeats those items over and over. One is that at age 12, Sinthia gets her first kiss from a boy and relates this fact to her mother. Then some time afterward, Sinthia becomes homicidally jealous of her father when he makes love to her mother. (She has one significant line, complaining about the father's attentions to her daughter). Sinthia stabs both parents to death with a knife (making her demurer than Lizzie Borden, I suppose). Then she burns down the house as well.

Though the law never doubts that Sinthia committed the crime, for some reason she's remanded to the custody of a never-seen aunt and uncle. Sinthia does have to continue seeing a psychiatrist, which apparently goes on for eight years. But viewers only see 20-year- old Sinthia being told by her unnamed analyst that he thinks she's cured. However, one last step is required before the doctor can release her from his supervision and can pronounce Sinthia capable of re-entering society, including her marrying an unspecified suitor. He subjects Sinthia to a hypnotic trance, telling her that the only way she can atone for her crime is to imagine killing her parents again, but with the alteration that she too dies in the fire she set. This bizarre excuse for therapy allows Steckler to make most of the narrative into an extended dream, the better to work in as many nude-scenes as possible.    

The first dream-sequence can be fairly termed Sinthia's guilt-complex, as she dreams herself in Hell, surrounded by semi-clad male and female devils who mock her for wanting her father sexually. This sequence ends with Lucifer ordering Sinthia to be whipped-- and then suddenly, with no transition, she's on a beach, where lives a couple: an artist, Lenny, and his wife Carol. The dead father's name is said early on to have been "Leonard," and the same actors who play Lenny and Carol played Sinthia's murdered parents. So, to be as generous as possible in following Steckler's rough logic, this sequence is Sinthia avoiding the psychiatrist's commandment to atone.

As the dream goes on, Sinthia relates to Lenny and Carol as if they were her revived father and mother-- though with some wacky differences, like having a brief lesbian hookup with Carol. Yet Carol, being part of Sinthia's dream, also acts as if she knows Sinthia, a stranger, plans to move in on Carol's husband. On top of that, Lenny takes Sinthia to a rinky-dink theater to see a play Carol's performing in. And it's here that Sinthia meets yet another fractious older couple, Mark and Liz. In fact, when the two of them stage a fight on stage, Sinthia intervenes to protect the "good father" from the "bad mother." It's possible-- though hard to be sure-- that Steckler intended to portray Sinthia deflecting from her original transgression by seeking out an older man who doesn't look like her late father. At any rate, Sinthia does shift her attentions, and dreams that she's marrying Mark in a church. Everyone in attendance seems okay with it-- until a naked woman, presumably Liz, intrudes and embraces Mark. Suddenly Sinthia's back in Lenny's arms for a few minutes. Finally, she wakes up, back in the psychiatrist's office. 

The shrink is waiting for her. Without even asking Sinthia questions, he seems to know that her first dream-fugue failed. So he repeats his earlier counsel: Sinthia must try to dream the circumstances of the double murder, but this time force herself to die in the fire she sets. Sinthia agrees to try. In moments she's back with her four middle-aged overseers, but now they sound like they're prompting Sinthia to do as the analyst suggested. Sinthia has a vision of her soul afire, and then she succeeds in returning to the death-scene in her home. Again she knifes the copulating parents, but she doesn't perish in the fire she sets. Lenny comes back to life to insist that she repents of her evil acts. At last Sinthia (conveniently nude at this point) concludes that "I must be pure once more," and Lenny tells her that she can only atone by loving her own soul-- whatever that means. 

\Steckler randomly tosses in a few more hallucinatory scenes, one of which repeats Sinthia confessing her "first kiss" to her mother. It's anyone's guess as to what this could have signified to Steckler. Then there's one more confrontation scene, with both Mark and Lenny claiming Sinthia while both Liz and Carol oppose them (albeit only with words). Then somehow this all moves Sinthia to re-dream the murder-scene, set the fire-- and force her dream-self to perish in the fire.

Sinthia wakes, the psychiatrist pronounces her cured, and out of the office she goes to meet her fiancee. Which of the two male actors from the dream portrays the fiancee? Take a wild guess.

As mentioned before, my wild guess as to this movie's genesis is that Steckler saw some artfilm that impressed him, so he tried, in his incompetent way, to emulate it. Maybe he'd read a little Freud, for it was Big Sigmund's belief that once a child became entrained upon the opposite-sex parent, in adulthood that offspring would always be looking for some sublimated version of the parent. So maybe sinful Sinthia overcomes her guilt, but only by accepting the sublimated version of her father-image into her adult sex-life. Still, it might be argued that the young psycho, rather than atoning for her terrible actions, gets a happy ending in exchange for killing her mother, since her Electra-complex is satisfied by a daddy-lookalike.   

                

A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES (1974)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

I saw a cut-down version of this film, running about sixty minutes, under the title JACK THE RIPPER GOES WEST. The version under this title runs a little under 90 minutes, and until I saw that, I couldn't be sure if there was any justification for the "Ripper" allusion-- which indeed there is none. Yet, going by the above poster, the lack of a genuine "Saucy Jack" in the story didn't prevent someone from claiming that the psycho-killer in the story was "The Ripper." The hyperbolic ad even attributes a Jason-like invulnerability to the lady-killer, and it highlights his alleged "blood lust for ladies naked and dead." All of this ballyhoo proves very ironic when one finds out the true nature of the character whose pustule-covered face is implied to be the referenced "Ripper."

There had been a small number of movies or TV shows about psycho-killers in the Old West before KNIFE. However, neither the three credited writers nor the director had any facility with the horror-genre, and KNIFE spotlights those limitations. Of the three writers, one has no other IMDB credits, the second went on mostly to cartoons and variety shows, and the third, Seton Miller, had distinguished himself in Hollywood Classic films, not least a favorite of mine, THE BLACK SWAN-- but Miller passed right around the time of KNIFE's release. Director Larry Spangler never worked on another horror film before or after this one, and one can see that he barely knows how to build suspense or display gory effects. In fact, at its heart KNIFE is a revisionist western, not unlike the two "Nigger Charley" films Spangler completed before it. The horror-plot is just an excuse to present a conflict of "the old generation and the new"-- though the film's handling of the theme is jejune at best.  

 

The mining-town of Mescal (named for its long-dead founder) was once prosperous, but with the mine's failure Mescal is a dying burg. Out of this poverty a serial killer arises, knocking off three ladies of the evening, one of whom is slain for an opening scene. In contrast to the governmental indifference to the fate of prostitutes in many Ripper-films, Mescal's banker wants the killer caught right away. Having no confidence in Jarrod (Jack Elam), the town's old, drunken sheriff, the banker hires a big-city detective, Burns (a big-haired Jeff Cooper). Burns never really does much detecting. He does interview a few people, notably the widow of the founder, Elizabeth Mescal (Ruth Roman), who provides the tossed-off info that she also had an adult son, Travis, by her late husband, and that he too has recently died. But Jarrod hates Burns at first sight, and eventually the two end up proving their mutual manhood with a fistfight. But because there aren't that many more murders during the film's second act, Spangler makes up the difference with a side-plot about finding the men who lynched an innocent suspect.

Both the main plot and the side-plots are dull and poorly acted, but these were apparently what grabbed Spangler and the writers, because when it comes time to deliver on the premise, they rush through it. The big reveal is that Travis Mescal-- who's been mentioned as having been a big man with the ladies in life-- never died. Elizabeth faked the story of his death and kept him in a cage within her mansion, allowing him to become both physically and mentally disfigured by a "social disease." So Travis hasn't actually been lurching around displaying his blood lust for dead, naked ladies; his momma done did it all. Elizabeth, then, is really the centric icon whom the two dull crime-solvers pursue. But the script doesn't have the stones to explore Elizaeth's maternal version of the Oedipus complex. One can guess that she resented Travis's dalliances with prostitutes, and that resentment, as well as community reputation, led her to fake her son's death and deny him whatever care might have been available in the 1880s. Yet she also blamed the whores for her son's decay and started killing them-- only to decide at the last moment to give Travis a "virgin bride," Jarrod's niece. A better script could have subtly alluded to Elizabeth's incestuous nature, as was done in the 1962 MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. But as I said, it looks like none of the principals cared about getting the horror-story right. Once the crazy mother and her spawn are both dead, the film ends with Burns, Jarrod and Jarrod's niece leaving Mescal to its decaying fate-- which doesn't seem like a very happy ending for the townsfolk.

                    

MY DEAR KILLER (1972), WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS (1974)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

Here are two police-thrillers that just barely make it into the domain of "the giallo" thanks to killers who sometimes employ unusual murder-methods.

KILLER's director/co-scripter Tonino Valerii had written a couple of scripts for metaphenomenal films in the 1960s, but this was his only giallo. He brings to the film decent but not outstanding visuals, and so the story seems far more concerned with the heroic policeman's mystery-solving and not with the nature of the serial killer.

KILLER certainly starts off with a bang. The first murder victim is seen standing beside a country swamp, one surrounded by excavation equipment. Some unseen person takes control of a "claw" machine and uses it to slice off the victim's head. Detective Peretti (George Hilton) is assigned to the case, and as he seeks to make sense of the peculiar killing, others begin dying as well. This leads Peretti to delve into a cold case that involved the kidnapping of the little daughter of a rich man. The kidnapper collected his ransom but killed off both the little girl and her father. 

I must confess here that for some reason I decided to read the summary on Wiki, as I usually do not, because I found it a little hard to follow who was who-- even though most of the possible suspects consisted of the rich man's family and their servants. It soon becomes evident that the unknown killer is assassinating everyone whom he thinks might possess a clue to his dastardly deed. Because I read the summary, it seemed to me like Valerii barely made an effort toward implicating the other suspects. But I can't claim this time that I pegged the killer in advance.

I liked Hilton and other members of the cast, which includes Helga Line (in a very brief role), William Berger, and Marilu Tolo (who has a brief upper-body nude scene). But even though the photography looks good the mise-en-scene is pretty slow. The killer's only other atypical weapon is a rotary saw, but in other scenes he just uses a knife or a club. No competition for Argento here.

  Massimo Dallamano's DAUGHTERS is much more effective, for all that the killer is really just a mob-enforcer (mostly seen in a motorcycle-outfit) who occasionally uses very bloody methods of rubbing out targets. He's also working to eliminate all potential witnesses to a crime that involves an older range of victims: high-school age girls who, overconfident of their own abilities to suss things out, get pulled into a sex ring. 

The story centers upon two investigators: Inspector Silvestre (Claudio Cassinelli) and female district attorney Stori (Giovanna Ralli). Though there are one or two moments where Stori's gender is raised as a dramatic problem, both characters are seen to be forthright and conscientious in the efforts to expose the conspiracy. Dallamano, who had previously contributed a decent giallo in WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO SOLANGE?, focuses almost exclusively on the "police-thriller" aspects of the story. I found Dallamano's narrative drive far more compelling that it was in SOLANGE, as well as the way the script (co-written by Dallamano) develops the insidious operations of the corrupt sex ring, run by ambitious men who get off on their ability to control their underage victims absolutely. If it weren't for the presence of the bloody-handed assassin, DAUGHTERS wouldn't be a giallo at all.

NOTE: KILLER's eminence is its monster, but that of DAUGHTERS is its two heroes.

         

THE BLOODSTAINED SHADOW (1978)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

For what it's worth, this is the first giallo I've come across in which the setting was that of a small/mid-size town with a rural atmosphere, as opposed to being either in a big city or at some ritzy manor out in the country. Despite the less intense setting, director/co-writer Antonio Bido-- who only helmed one other horror-movie, the slightly earlier WATCH ME WHEN I KILL-- generates ample tension despite the lack of extreme gore or artsy murder-methods.

Young Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) seeks a rest-cure in a small island-town near Venice, though the viewer is not told what he's resting up from. On his way there, he shares a train-ride with a pretty if enigmatic young woman, Sandra (Stefania Casini). Stefano, reaching his destination, is welcomed by his older brother Don Paolo (Craig Hill), the Catholic priest of the community. Though everything seems like a typical low-key rural town, Paolo makes mention of some of the covert scandals to which he, as a priest, has been made privy.

In contrast to convention, it's not the visitor to the town who witnesses a violent murder that night, but the resident priest, who looks out his window and sees a killer in black gloves and a black overcoat assaulting a woman. Paolo rouses Stefano, but by the time they get outside, neither figure is present. However, the next day the cops find the woman's dead body; that of a local medium already mentioned in Paolo's gossip. Some mention is made of an unsolved murder in the village from many years back, though no connection is offered. Later, Paolo receives a note threatening him if he doesn't keep his nose out of things.

Stefano's little problem is still not explained, though the audience sees him having a few weird flashbacks to some forbidding experience. He meets Sandra again and she invites him to dinner, where Stefano meets Sandra's stepmother. Meanwhile, one of the local mothers appeals to Paolo to speak to piano teacher Pedrazzi (Massimo Serato, the only name I recognized), accused of getting handsy with underage students, even though the grey-haired eminence already lives with a twenty-something young man. In what is almost certainly meant to be a clue, Pedrazzi calls the righteous priest a "hypocrite." 

Other victims are targeted, though the only connection may be that some or all victims may have sought the services of the lady medium--with the exception of Paolo, who's almost crushed by a falling statue. Stefano eventually sleeps with Sandra, though the sex is kept at a pleasant PG level. Sandra is also briefly menaced, though the killer isn't explicitly seen. It's arguable that Bido provides a few too many red herrings, as is seen with a local female abortionist with a demented adult son, who seem to be added for shock value. Still, I liked both the atmosphere and the score by Goblin, famed for working on various Argento movies. Considering that the killer doesn't use any exotic weapons, Bido provides a fair amount of variety in terms of the killings.

            

BLOODY PIT OF HORROR (1965)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

I've argued in a separate essay that BLOODY PIT OF HORROR is more than just another dumb horror flick about a menace in an old castle. Though its writers and director were probably innocent of any desire to make PIT "arty" in any way, I find it likely that they were aware of how routine many similar old-castle flicks had become even in the short period of Italy's investment in horror cinema. After all, PIT was being shot at the same Palazzo Borghese castle that had hosted two generic flicks, THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA and THE PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE. Whatever behind-the-scenes crew might have been in both of these as well as PIT, the only obvious point of continuity is the lead male player, Walter Brandi.

There's nothing very notable about the victims here than in the earlier two films. Since the "old dark house" flicks of the silent era, there was an established trope in which a group of vulnerable individuals get trapped/stranded in some house where a mystery killer seeks to knock them off one by one. In this case, PIT, like the two 1960 movies, ups the level of pulchritude seen in old dark house films. This time the group is led to a remote castle by Parks, a publisher of crime and horror books. I have no idea if Italian publishing houses actually went around looking for locations at which to shoot photos, and since one guy in the party dresses up in a skeleton costume a la Italian comics-villains like Diabolik and Kriminal, it's possible Parks is publishing fumetti, not "real books." Frankly, the location-scouting thing sounds more typical of movie companies, like the one making this film. In any case Parks brings with a couple of male assistants, his star writer Rick (Brandi), his secretary Edith (Louise Barrett), and four gorgeous models. Of the persons in Parks' party, only two get anything like two-dimensional characterization. Edith, despite not ever having seen the castle before, feels strangely drawn to it. Rick occasionally tosses out wry remarks about his association with this farrago, and we later learn he was a reporter and fell into writing horror books because it seemed easy.

Parks orders his people to break into the castle, thinking it deserted. The unnamed "master of the house" (Mickey Hargitay) and his whole two servants (both strapping men in outfits like those of Venetian gondoliers) order the group to leave. However, from a secret vantage the master sees and recognizes Edith, whereon he changes his mind, permitting the crew to remain for the night, as long as they keep clear of the castle's dungeons.

Now, it's likely dire things might have happened to the visitors even if they'd obeyed the injunction. But of course Parks can't pass up a chance to take dungeon-pictures, so he and his crew invade the dungeon and set up sexy scenarios. It's all fun and games, until someone loses a head when one of the torture-machines kills him.

There's no mystery about who the killer is, even after it's disclosed that the castle once belonged to a medieval torturer, The Crimson Executioner, killed by authorities in his own domicile. Once Edith eventually gets a look at the castle's owner, she tells Rick she was once engaged to actor Travis Anderson, renowned for having played "muscle men in costume films," Anderson, says Edith, left her without explanation, or even cancelling their engagement, and evidently purchased the castle because he admired the accomplishments of its medieval master. By this time, though, Anderson and his henchmen have already killed a couple more victims, and as in the persona of the scarlet-clad torturer, Anderson begins using his specialized devices to wreak havoc on Parks and the terrified models. He takes Edith prisoner as well, trying to get her to embrace a hanging mannequin with poisoned barbs attached. Meanwhile, Rick, the only one free, has a couple of running battles with one of the henchmen (not sure where the second one went). After the henchman thinks he's killed Rick with an arrow, the guy reports to his leader in the dungeon. However, Rick's death is a fakeout, and he shows up in the dungeon, beating down each of the two men in succession. (Nice of them not to gang up on the writer.) The Executioner conveniently runs into the "poison mannequin" and is semi-literally hoist on his own petard. Rick and Edith alone survive the ordeal, implicitly with some romance for both in future.

Now, there's one minor sociological motif in PIT: that of purveyors of sexy/violent fiction get subjected to real horrors. But no one in the audience was likely to agree with the villain was justified in visiting these dooms on foolish innocents, even though they trespassed on private property. PIT doesn't possess, or claim to possess, internal logic. But given all the lovingly constructed torture devices Anderson has at his immediate disposal, clearly he's been at least fantasizing about subjecting victims to torture-scenarios for quite some time. One device is a huge spider-web with arrows rigged to fire if anyone touches the web-strands: Rick tries and fails to rescue one model (Moha Tahi) from this web of sin. Another is the poison mannequin, which Anderson calls "the Lover of Death." Curiously in the English dub. Anderson genders the mannequin as a "him" even though the dummy has long blonde hair. It would make more sense if Anderson had considered this mock-horror to be a representative of the perils of female sexuality and so would also be roughly congruent with the way the original medieval Executioner dies, by Iron Maiden. 

And why does Anderson want so badly to torture others? Well, the easy answer is that of compensation: he tortures others because he feels tortured. But assuming that the English dub represents the original Italian reasonably well, then the writers were also apparently having fun with the idea of a big strong muscleman who utters lines like "a woman's love would have destroyed me."

Sketchy though both Anderson and Edith are, their one long conversation suggests that Anderson, in pursuing a career as a "muscle man in costume films" formed the idea that he had made himself into "a perfect body." Since physical culture requires denial, Anderson eventually denied himself anything that detracted from his goal of bodily perfection. It's funny when Edith reacts to Anderson's declarations by calling Anderson an "egotist." Yet it's nonetheless true that the villain has validated his ego by worshipping not only his own body's physical power, but also the power that was once wielded by a long-dead master of torture-devices. Italian audiences would have also recognized that when Edith speaks of "costume pictures," she means a specific breed of historical flicks in which a male hero showed off a boulder-shouldered physique, the better to portray legendary heroes like Hercules, Samson and Maciste. The English dialogue does not allude to the fact that by 1965, hardly anyone was making "Hercules films" anymore, so all of Anderson's efforts to sculpt his body for the purposes of cinematic employment would have come to nothing. (And of course the writers would also have known that Mickey Hargitay played Hercules in one Italian-made spectacle from 1960.) However, the existing soundtrack emphasizes only Anderson's fear that somehow the love of a woman will compromise his male integrity. 

I've seen one or two arguments that PIT represents Anderson's rejection of his former fiancee as homoerotic in nature, and for a time I considered this possibility, given that Anderson's only two servants are musclemen like he is. However, the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed. If Anderson's concern is for keeping the integrity of his "perfect body," then a homosexual encounter would be MORE invasive, not less. It's more likely Anderson keeps around two hulking guards because they present no attractions for him, and also because they're the most effective guardians of his privacy. But when Parks' band brings sexy women into Anderson's domain-- one of whom is the woman he had at least dallied with-- then that occurrence reactivates his antipathy toward sex. As long as there were no women around, Anderson could lose himself in narcissistic dreams of his perfection and of the power once wielded by his idol, the Crimson Executioner. But once the female sex is on his radar, then he becomes obsessed with being a torture-master. 

              

And for my last point, I wondered in my other essay how the writers even came up with the idea of a big muscleman dispensing tortures. And one possibility is that if one or more writers were familiar with the major tropes of the musclemen films, they would have known that a great many of those movies place the bulked-up hero in some situation where he must conquer some infernal device (like a spiked wall) or some huge animal, etc. These tortures are visited upon the hero by men and women who cannot possibly fight the hero on his own terms, and in the case of the women, usually evil queens, there can be an element of sadism, the desire to conquer the noble crusader. I hypothesize that the writers of PIT, if only for the sake of variety, wanted to reverse that trope, so that the hulking protagonist would reveal his own impotence in torturing those weaker than himself.  

A WHISPER KILLS (1988)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

If I ever again get the impulse, "Oh, X Celebrity just died; I'll watch this obscure thing in which he/she appeared," I need to kick myself. In this case I gave this worthless piece of TV fodder a chance because of the passing of June Lockhart. I would have done better to have watched the lousiest episode of her stint on PETTICOAT JUNCTION. The director here is long-time journeyman Christian Nyby II, but I blame the badness of eleven-time screenwriter John Bensick for not putting together even a basically serviceable script.

In some small town, Liz (Loni Anderson) runs a local newspaper in partnership with a guy she once slept with. She wants to keep things all business, he doesn't. Then the viewer (but no one else) sees the partner stabbed to death by what is pretty evidently (as shown in the advertising) a lean woman in a mask. A day or so later, a reporter named Dan (Joe Penny), friend of the deceased, comes to town, wanting to find the killer. Liz and Dan butt heads as a foretaste of their inevitable hookup, but she hires this apparent "bad boy" anyway. The killer announces her intent to kill again by phoning the sheriff and saying so in a forbidding whisper.

For the next half hour, Liz and Dan spin their wheels, wasting time and building no suspense whatever. Finally the script gets around to having Dan interview Liz's mother Mrs. Rogers (Lockhart), who reveals that Liz underwent psychiatric care after her father either was killed by an intruder or killed himself-- the script is vague about which is the case. After this big revelation, Dan suddenly starts seeing Liz in a different light, as a possible psycho-- though at no point does Loni Anderson play her character as anything but a square citizen. There's a suggestion that Liz might have been molested by her dad, and also that she had an affair with her psychiatrist, but it's just more time-killing crap.

I can't do better in pointing out, as did another reviewer, the absurdity of creating a mystery about a female killer in a script that only boasts two prominent female characters (though, curiously enough, former serial queen Phyllis Coates has a small role in the telefilm). So of course it's really Mrs. Rogers, but the lazy writer can't even be bothered to sketch out her motivations. Did she execute her two or three victims because she thought they threatened her daughter? Or (slightly more likely) did she resent her daughter because her husband has sex with Young Liz, and so decided to go after Liz's exes?         

Even in the domain of TV movies, this is one of the laziest scripts I've ever encountered.  

SWEET, SWEET RACHEL (1971)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

I'm not sure what's so "sweet" about Rachel Stanton (Stefanie Powers). She's certainly as victimized as any of the most persecuted heroines of Gothic tales, and in almost every scene her torment is torqued up to Warp Eleven. But there's nothing especially "sweet" about her. 

Rachel's torments start out with a bravura opening that's better than the rest of the movie. On the second floor of a manor house, a man, Paul Stanton, sits playing some sort of game with a deck of non-standard Tarot cards. He seems to see and hear his wife Rachel coming toward him, calling his name. He rushes to her, no longer seeing his real surroundings, and crashes through a window, falling to his death. The real Rachel arrives in the room moments afterward, aghast at Paul's catastrophe. The phone on Paul's desk rings, Rachel answers it, and a voice recites the images on the five Tarot cards Paul had just dealt himself.

Viewers never learn just what sort of occult beliefs the late Paul Stanton nurtured, but Rachel did not share them. However, the outre circumstances of Paul's death make her desire to know if she just concocted her impressions out of a psychotic episode, or if there's really supernatural hanky-panky going on. Fortunately, Rachel happens to live in or near a city with a functioning psychic research facility. From this source come the story's heroes: former surgeon Dr Darrow (Alex Drier) and his aide Johnson (Chris Robinson), a blind man who has developed psychic senses in compensation for his affliction. 

The pool of suspects is not a deep one, for RACHEL only has three other significant characters: Rachel's aunt Lillian Piper (Louise Latham), her husband Arthur (Pat Hingle), and their daughter Nora (Brenda Scott). Early in the film Lillian claims that she was indeed engaged in some sort of occult game with Paul, and that she was the voice on the other end of the line, though this confession removes none of Rachel's feelings of guilt. The husband Arthur is perhaps a little too invisible in early scenes, while Nora loudly reviles Rachel, claiming that she Nora was Paul's true love. This is fairly weak story-scaffolding, as the script never expounds on how the two cousins interacted before Paul married Rachel.

Further, the psychic assassin is still in play, taking exception to Darrow and Johnson trying to solve the mystery. In two separate scenes, Darrow is made to hallucinate in ways that might have caused the deaths of both investigators. Then about halfway through the flick, Aunt Lillian gets killed. Did Rachel go berserk and take her aunt's life?

I'll say one thing for screenwriter Anthony Lawrence-- who also co-wrote the underrated pilot for the PHOENIX TV show-- he doesn't dole out a lot of clues, but he does play fair by spotlighting a suspicious encounter between Arthur and his daughter Nora, one that carries a sexual vibe. (To be sure, one IMDB review asserts that RACHEL was based on a book, though the IMDB page for the telefilm does not mention this.) Anyway, Darrow devises a way to trap the psychic schemers-- one that gives Johnson his first real role in the story-- and the duo soon learn that Nora, not the late Lillian, is the one with real mental talents. The motive, supplied by Nasty Arthur, has something to do with the uncle inheriting Rachel's fortune if she gets put away, though technically no one in the movie raises the possibility of committing the heiress. There's a struggle between Nora and the father who cajoled her into killing Nora's true love, and Nora "accidentally" kills her oppressor. Rachel's ghosts, so to speak, are laid to rest, while Darrow and Johnson stand ready to bust more ghosts in the TV show that followed this unofficial pilot--

--Except that when that show debuted under the new title THE SIXTH SENSE, Dreier and Robinson were out and the more telegenic Gary Collins became the sole investigator for SENSE's two seasons, on whose episodes Lawrence enjoyed a "created by" credit. I have not watched any full SENSE episodes since the show's initial run, and re-screening might uncover some gems. However, my dominant memory was that the episodes were dull and lacked any of the visual verve that director Sutton Roley brought to RACHEL. Roley and Lawrence were both essentially journeymen talents in the world of episodic TV, and I didn't see too much of distinction in either man's repertoire, except for the previously mentioned PHOENIX credit for Lawrence.  RACHEL by itself is a cut or two above the average Gothic-thriller telefilm from this period, but nothing more.           

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE III (1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

And as the sun sinks slowly in the distance, we bid farewell to the SLUMBER PARTY franchise, a farewell made easier by the underwhelming nature of the final entry.

It's probably just as well the director and writer-- both women, though I discerned no feminist content whatever this time-- decided to start over with all new characters. I suspect that most of the later "slumber party" films building on the basic concept probably follow the example of PARTY #3, for it's just the predictable story of a psycho-killer preying on a half dozen girls in a slumber party.

The most I can say for this one is that in comparison to many of the sludgy slashers from the 80s and 90s, this one at least has decent production values. While these California girls are planning their party, a killer knocks off one of their buddies with a rotary drill. The script tosses out two separate red herrings in the form of creepy-looking bozos, and maybe a third when one of the girls (Maria Ford) says she's dating a fifty-year-old suitor. But all of these details are dodges to fool the viewer when the killer proves to be Ken (Brittain Frye), a young clean-cut fellow. He's one of a group of young guys who intrude on the girls' party, but Ken's not interested in harmless sexual teasing. The guy's got some never-completely-explained psychosis due to having been molested by his uncle. Why does this make him decide to kill copious young girls with a power drill? Who knows?

Once Ken kills off the guys, the rest of the film is just running battles in the house as Ken kills some girl, another girl whacks him with some object, he recovers and keeps on drillin'. Eventually he does get taken out by Main Girl Jackie (Keely Christian), though she's not the last girl to survive as in many other slashers. I'd give what few acting points are possible to Frye, who at least puts a lot of energy into his routine psycho. The aforementioned Maria Ford later went to star in a few "lady butt-kicker" films, while another actress, Hope Marie Carlton, had previously initiated the "Hard Ticket to Hawaii" series in 1987.                

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II (1987)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

While PARTY #2 isn't a huge improvement over the first film, I have to give it points for being a little less predictable. 

Writer-director Deborah Block doesn't have a much more stellar resume on IMDB than does previous writer-director Amy Jones. However, Block's PARTY has much more of the look and feel of a slasher-movie. True, she does so by having her viewpoint character besieged by nightmare visions long before encounters the required massacre-maker who may have been partly patterned on Freddy Kruger. (PARTY #1 made substantial coin in 1982, so it's not evident why the producers took five years to whip out a sequel.)

A year or two has passed since the first film. Courtney Bates, the junior high girl who was already very curious about sex, wasn't deeply involved in the original rampage of maniacal Russ Thorn, but we don't know what happened to Trish while Courtney's sister Valerie has been confined to an asylum. Courtney (now played by Crystal Bernard, the only PARTY #2 performer who went on to any acting fame) is first seen slowly awakening from sleep in her bed at home, swaddled in pink sheets. Given that PARTY #2 is mostly about Courtney's desire to overcome past demons and to live a normal (and therefore sexually fulfilling) life, I suspect that the pink sheets were a conscious choice on Block's part.

Courtney hasn't dated yet, but she's in an all-female rock band with three other girls. None of the other characters are important to the story except as background, with the minor exception of Matt, a classmate Courtney likes. Courtney's birthday is impending, and on the same weekend she's been invited by one of her band-buddies to a weekend, just for the girls at a beach condo. The young woman's mother tries to talk Courtney into going to visit her institutionalized sister instead. Courtney, her mind filled with thoughts of sex (since a few boys, including Matt, have been invited), avoids associating with her sister's trauma and gets permission to make the trip (which I don't recall being called a slumber party).

Once she's on her way to the condo, though, our heroine begins having all sorts of minatory nightmares, while at the condo she begins to conflate her potential boyfriend with a weird specter that looks like a demonic Elvis. Most of Courtney's "waking dreams" are fairly standard grossout illusions, but the pomaded predator in the black leather, billed as The Driller Killer, is a fairly original creation. Once Block has burned up a certain amount of time with the bad dreams, she gets down to business with a high-octane chase scene. The Driller, who wields a guitar with a rotary drill mounted on its neck, comes to life and begins slaughtering teens right and left, with copious Freddy-like lines about sexual stimulation (quoting the Stones "I Can't Get No Satisfaction," for example). All of Courtney's friends die, but once her back is against the wall, she summons her inner Final Girl and destroys the killer with a Molotov cocktail. (I assume he doesn't sing "Hunka Burning Love" as he dies was because the rights cost too much.)  Or is the Driller Killer dead? The movie ends with the teen bedded down in an asylum like her sister, just as that fearsome penile drill starts burrowing in from beneath.

Nothing in the finished script indicates a connection between the Driller Killer and deceased maniac Russ Thorn, but some online sites claim that the specter is "The Reincarnated Russ Thorn." I didn't credit this theory at first. However, I was initially perplexed as to why Courtney, a teen who would have been born in the early seventies, would have imagined some greasy-haired rockabilly type as the incarnation of destructive sexuality. HOWEVER-- earlier I pointed out that the performer playing Russ Thorn in PARTY #1 was in his forties when that film was made. So if Thorn came back as a super-powered ghost a la Freddy-- then in life he would have been a teen in the 1950s, and HE would have regarded a greasy rocker as the epitome of dangerous male sexuality. Courtney could not have known that, but if she'd failed to exorcise her psychological trauma, maybe she opened a gateway for Thorn's return. But if so, Psycho Elvis got no third act, for PARTY #3 dropped any connections to the other two films. 

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE (1982)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

In addition to the three entries in this psycho-killer series, the basic idea seems to have been copied not only in the eighties but also into the streaming era. The script for PARTY #1 was written as a parody of slashers by feminist author Rita Mae Brown, but the production company and director Amy Jones reworked the story into a straightforward horror movie with only a few over-the-top elements.

The most obvious such element is the one that got up-front promotion in the above lobby card: that of a bunch of screaming 20-something girls being menaced by a maniac with a power drill poised unsubtly between his legs. But though serial killer Ross Thorn (Michael Villella, then about forty years old) is technically the star of the show, the finished script says nothing about what to led him to start his spree killings, and only toward the very end is it loosely suggested that he views his drill as a penis-substitute. 

It's the girls who get all the screentime (scream-time?) However, they're not any better characterized than the killer or the majority of teen victims in psycho-killer films before or after this one. Two of them rank as the movie's "final girls:" Trish (Michele Michaels), who invites other high school girls to her house for a slumber party because her parents are away, and her neighbor-classmate Valerie (Robin Stille), who gets invited but chooses for Reasons to stay home and babysit her younger sister Courtney. No boys are supposed to attend, though the "slutty girl" invites her boyfriend, and two dateless losers peep on the party as well. Thorn, who's already killed off two young lovelies with his drill, finds out about the soiree and invites himself. 

The dialogue is adequate but dull, and Jones' direction has a no-frills sort of TV-show feel. Not much beyond jump-scares happens until the final half hour, when the girls are trapped in the house with the killer and, amid much carnage, the two Final Girls must step up to end his reign of terror. The scene in which Valerie wields a machete to slice off the end of Thorn's drill is the highlight, but no one's psychology goes beyond the basics. and the male/female social matrix doesn't amount to much either. It may be significant that the only "normal" males who get much screentime are the two peepers-- both of whom get killed-- mention that they've peeped on the girls before and got beat up for it. Maybe it's just as well the world wasn't exposed to Brown's original satirical wit.        

SWEET SIXTEEN (1983)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* 

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

"What terrors are unleashed when a girl turns-- sweet sixteen?" Well, in execution, not too many, especially for a slasher film that came out in the heyday of that phase of the psycho-killer subgenre. But it's a nice tagline, and the poster is clever, showing a nude young girl up to her waist in a lake, while beneath the water's surface is a knife ready for hackups. I'm tempted to invoke the hoary "vagina dentata" trope, but I don't really think director Jim Sotos and "only one movie" writer Erwin Goldman were thinking along such lines.

For my own sense of fairness, I have to disclose that I accidentally read the solution to the mystery in some review, long before I got around watching the film for the first time today. I like to think that I would have guessed that the dangerous dame spotlighted, Melissa Morgan (Aleisa Shirley), was not going to be the killer simply because the viewer doesn't see Melissa perpetrating the knife-killings onscreen, which automatically seems like a setup for "the least likely suspect."

So here's the basics: the setting is a small Texas town where nothing ever happens, except when the local racist whites get liquored up and start trouble with the local Indians (though we never see more than two).  Sheriff Burke (Bo Hopkins) seems to have things pretty easy, though his teenaged kids Hank and Marci bug him a little about getting married to his "comfort girlfriend." Marci is an amateur sleuth, but has nothing to practice her skills on, until a new family moves to town. The Morgans consist of Father John (Patrick MacNee), Mother Joanne (Susan Strasberg), and the aforementioned Melissa. John Morgan is an archaeologist who's come to look for Indian artifacts, and he's brought Joanne, who used to be a resident of the small town long ago, but has presumably been absent at least for the length of Melissa's young life. As for Melissa, she's fifteen going on sixteen, and in a big hurry to graduate-- even though of course in a lot of states she still would not be "legal" until 18. 

Melissa is set up to be trouble with a capital T as she starts trying to hang out with young guys in her age-range. However, the script doesn't place a lot of emphasis on Melissa's character. Indeed, it pays more attention to Joanne's previous history with the townsfolk, particularly a local politician who seems to have been intimate with her. She's only come back because of her husband's work-- but why should the audience care, if she's not Significant in Some Way?

Two of the boys Melissa hung out with are brutally knifed to death, and some antique Indian knives go missing from the archaeological dig. Is there any real chance that one of the two Indians in town has gone berserk? Not much, since Melissa says that she saw one of them near the body of the second victim, and local racists lynch the accused man. But is there any chance that the other Little Indian is going to be the culprit? Nope, because he's not even close to being the least likely suspect. Nor is John, nor are the two local racists.

It's at the lakeside scene toward the climax-- wherein Melissa goes skinny-dipping to impress Hank Burke-- that the mystery unravels. The two racist guys attack her and Hank, but they're both slain (in almost the only bloody scenes). The culprit is Joanne, who, in a hurry-up-and-finish revelation, has nurtured for years a double personality, in which she committed the murders. It all has something to do with some molestation of Joanne and her long-dead twin sister, whom Joanne has identified with. But why, in looking for substitutes for the father who traumatized her, does she go after the young guys chasing after her daughter? Even for movie psychology, the solution doesn't hang together.

SIXTEEN is a pretty slow affair, and it wastes time with Marci befriending Melissa-- which doesn't matter because her character remains flat. The actors merely put in their time, for there's not that much with which they could have engaged. So it's Joanne's traumatized sexuality that's the root of the fatalities, and thus the whole "sweet sixteen" thing is a dodge-- though I'll admit that it is like a lot of other slasher-holidays, centered around either holidays or other occasions of liminal importance. Could have been better, could have been worse.