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.