USA
Review: JA Kerswell
Incomprehensible and chaotic, Tim Ritter’s first film may be little more than a home movie shot on Super 8 with high school friends, yet it has an undeniable vintage mid-‘80s charm. A cannibalistic killer escapes from an asylum at least twice and then hunts down various townspeople, including a gaggle of bored-looking teenage girls. Starring 16-year-olds pretending to be middle-aged cops and businessmen, this is the undisputed BUGSY MALONE of slasher movies.
It is a little difficult to describe the plot of DAY OF THE REAPER. Not because it’s complicated or streamlined like HALLOWEEN (1978) (this is obviously a love letter of sorts to the slasher movies of the time), but because it doesn’t really make much sense. In what we presume is a flashback, a teenage girl, Jennifer (Cathy O’Hanlon), mopes, musing about being the survivor of a massacre. However, before that, we see two hospital orderlies escort a mental patient (Todd Nolf), whose head they have wrapped in a black sack (a Goth twist, perhaps, on Jason’s burlap sack in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 (1981)). In what will come as no surprise to anyone, The Reaper breaks free, killing the orderlies, but not before resurrecting and sitting up slowly, like Michael Myers, in cowboy boots and jeans after being repeatedly blasted with a shotgun.
So far, so expected. Then five teenage sunbathers break down on the way back from the beach somewhere in Florida, only for The Reaper to show up and gnaw on one of their arms after they naively go exploring the woods. The killer, now sporting a bloody apron, then starts bumping off the surviving girls and their boyfriends in their homes. Jennifer goes to a police detective (who hasn’t started shaving yet), who tells her he won’t stand for this kind of thing in his town, and that the killer has already eaten 40 people (which is quite some going since he only presumably escaped that day). To confuse things further, we see The Reaper break out of the asylum again, and then the detective tells Jennifer she’s making it all up and that there is no murderer. He suggests she see a doctor (Patrick Foster), who tells Jennifer that The Reaper is either humanity’s savior or a great monster, and that the only way to defeat him is to cut out his heart and eat it. So much for pastoral care! Before this can happen, another killer comes from nowhere, also wearing a sack on his head (in white this time). As Jennifer and the doc watch, the two fight to the death, and the doctor cuts out the slain Reaper’s heart, takes a nibble of it, and becomes possessed. Jennifer looks confused. The end.
It is also difficult to review a film like DAY OF THE REAPER. By no definition is it a good movie, not in the conventional sense. Still, it was put together with youthful grit and ambition, and you have to take your hat off to it—even if you end up scratching your head while watching it. As expected, the performances are what you'd expect from a bunch of high schoolers (even the killer is a lanky sixteen-year-old kid). That said, it is a little hard to judge the performances, since the Super 8 camera seemingly didn’t record sound, so everyone is post-dubbed and there is no attempt to match their lips to the dialogue. At times, it feels like a silent movie with feathercuts. This gives the film an off-kilter feel, and the bad line readings often add to the fun. Also, any film where the final Girl can knock out the killer with a gentle tap to the head with a log is gold.
Perhaps, as expected, although there is a good spattering of gore, it is, if not accomplished, at least enthusiastically thrown around. Sean Ruddy's soundtrack is a hodgepodge of electronic noises that sound like someone headbutting a Bontempi organ, plus a pastiche of Goblin’s theme from SUSPIRIA (1976). Apparently, Ritter worked as a dishwasher to raise the $1,000 budget. Unfortunately, it seems there was no money for lights, so it's often hard to see what is going on unless the action is filmed in full daylight. Even then, the Super 8 footage manages to be both grainy and smudgy. However, the film’s biggest obstacle is its hopelessly jumbled, incoherent narrative, with unexplained time jumps and characters whose actions seem to contradict their previous actions.
I guess I am a little forgiving, since I was only a little younger in 1984 than the kids who made this. Some friends and I made our own slasher murder mystery on a camcorder one drunken afternoon. It’s long lost now, which is probably a good thing, since it probably didn’t make any fucking sense, either.
BODY COUNT 9:
Female 4 / Male 5
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DAY OF THE REAPER (1984) - trailer
