the mutilator [1984]
the 1980s was the era of the slasher flick. a crazy psycho stalking a collection of teens &/or college students when the said young people are away from parents, authority figures, institutions to frolic & have sexy time with each other. one by one each young person is killed in a grand guignol manner all the way to the climax where one member of the group, usually the virginal girl, squares off with the psycho & often prevails. this girl was dubbed THE FINAL GIRL by critic/academic carol j. clover in her seminal study of slasher movies,
men, women, and chainsaws: gender in the modern horror film [princeton university press; 1992]. she is the survivor with the inner resources to fight the killer & live to tell the tale. she is often the girl who abstains from drugs, drink & sex. why? perhaps because the slasher genre really developed into a formula during the reagan era 1980s when nancy reagan's 'just say no' campaign was at its zenith?
i dunno. i resisted, & still somewhat resist, the slasher genre as formulaic dogma. clover brilliantly defines & delineates her Final Girl Theory in her work as a cultural critic. perhaps my resistance to slashers is based on my own biases. no one is virginally 'pure'. i grew up in the reagan '80s & did a lot of drugs & liked sex. nearly everyone i knew did too. i figured i'd have a fighting chance against michael myers as any virginal young woman who abstained from getting high. i always thought chance & luck played an outsized role in whether i survive an attack by jason voorhees, or survive my morning commute to work.
nevertheless, i thought, let me find a '80s slasher & give it a go. so here is the movie. as soon as we are introduced to our characters i telescoped the whole film. i knew The Final Girl would be pam, played by an actor unknown to me, ruth martinez. lo! that she is. pam is a virginal young woman who still likes to party. that she is pretty freaking adorable is a boon in this otherwise plodding movie. the rest of the cast, unknown to me as well, are all game. the acting is better than one would expect from a low budget horror flick of the early to mid 1980s. the director, buddy cooper, does a serviceable job. tho the first 2/3rds of this relatively trim movie, 86 minutes, plods along with some syrupy music & theme song, 'fall break' [which was the title for the movie in the print i watched], as our young couples do what young couples thru out time & space have always done.
there is no suspense. we know who the psycho killer is from the very first frame. the movie starts with a prologue. when the main character, ed, jr., played by matt mitler, was a child he cleaned all his father's hunting rifles as a birthday present for the old man, ed, sr,. during the cleaning little ed accidently shoots his mother who was baking in the kitchen. ed, sr. comes home from a pheasant hunt, finds his wife with her back blasted out, & immediately nearly kills his little boy. a couple decades later his little boy is in college, dating pam [The Final Girl], & invites a few of his friends to his father's beach cottage for the weekend. little do they know ed, sr., in a drunken psycho rage, is waiting for them at the beach house.
yet, this movie won me over. all the characters are believable & likeable. particularly pam, as essayed by martinez. the last 15 minutes or so really went balls to the wall. the fx was really good. the kills were especially messy! sometimes joel, you have to say what the fuck. & i did. i am almost a fan of the slasher genre based on my viewing of this pic. slashers can be cathartic experiences. when the shit gets too thick. when the stressors of ordinary living get to heavy watch a slasher movie. you will identify both with villain & victim. but when the shit hits the fan, you will be on the side of The Final Girl who by her very grit gives herself a fighting chance.
but watch out. michael myers & jason voorhees are eternal. they might be in your backyard right now!
boo!
