The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies Part 2

HAVING TAKEN AN excursion to a remote Greek island, two of them in hope of meeting up with their French friends, a party of tourists become stranded when their boat drifts out to sea. The group are forced to seek help in a nearby village, but as they search the deserted streets, their mood turns to one of apprehension. With darkness now set to draw in, members of the party decide to stay at the house owned by Julie's (Tisa Farrow) friends, who the viewers already know to be dead. Hidden away in the house the group find the French couple's blind daughter. She is beside herself and knows nothing of the whereabouts of the islanders, but jabbers about a man whose body reeks of blood. The remaining members of the group continue in their search for signs of life and come upon a mysterious woman in black, who warns them to leave the village.

As they continue in their exploration of the island, the boat party slowly begin to disappear, falling prey to a terrifyingly misshapen man. A journal discovered in an abandoned mansion tells of a family who many years before were s.h.i.+pwrecked on the island. The father was driven to eat the flesh and blood of his dead kin and in his all-consuming despair fell into madness. Now completely deranged, he turns to killing the island's inhabitants, feeding his newfound cannibal l.u.s.t after dragging his victims into the shadows of the island's catacombs. In the claustrophobia of the beast's darkened lair the audience are privy to the film's most notorious scene when he grasps a pregnant woman by the throat. During this frenzied strangulation, he tears the unborn child from her womb, and then, in full view of the camera, voraciously feeds upon its flesh. When this scene was first shown, it caused considerable dismay, so much so that D'Amato was later probed as to whether he had actually extracted a human foetus from the mother's womb. With almost the entire group now dead, one of the survivors finally overpowers the cannibalistic maniac by driving a pickaxe into his stomach. As the creature falls to the floor, he is once again overwhelmed by bloodl.u.s.t, but this time he is aroused by his own flesh and as the camera's lens frames his ruptured stomach he begins to devour his intestines.

Joe D'Amato's new terror, following the success of Buio Omega (1979), was essentially a bloodthirsty piece of exploitation whose subsequent reissues would go on to acquire a plethora of t.i.tles, among them Anthropophagous, Anthropophagous: The Beast, The Grim Reaper, Anthropophagus: The Grim Reaper, Man Eater and The Savage Island. While bereft of any true artistic merit, those horror fans who had only recently been led astray by the gore of Romero, Fulci and Argento, were only too eager to get to see the excess that was already being spoken of in this new offering. The film's early pacing has been criticized for being overly measured, but it has also been suggested this gave the air of impending dread the chance to build before the monstrous figure of George Eastman revealed his disfigured face. The violence that ensued was then swift and merciless as he ripped into the throat of an unsuspecting victim before seizing the face of his quarry and dragging it through a hole in the mansion's crumbling ceiling.

An uncut version of Anthropophagous: The Beast made it to video in the United Kingdom in February 1983. However, the severity of its content was such that it attracted the attention of the Director of Public Prosecutions, who duly labelled it as a video nasty, which led to it being prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act in 1984. The furore came largely as a result of the infamous foetus-eating scene and as the BBC News reported there were accusations that it was a snuff movie.

D'Amato's film is still only available in the UK in its cut form, under the t.i.tle The Grim Reaper. Almost twenty years after the original release first terrorized cinema screens, German low-budget cult director Andreas Schnaas produced an extreme re-telling as Anthropophagous 2000 (1999) to a somewhat mixed critical response.

WEALTHY COLLEGE STUDENT m.u.f.fy St John (Deborah Foreman) has invited a group of her friends to stay at her parent's island home for an extended weekend of frivolity. Their arrival on the ferry on the day before April Fool's Day is caught on a home video, conferring the film a strangely sinister introductory sequence. Very soon, the friends are involved in a whole series of amusing pranks. Their stay, however, is marred by the disappearance of one of the guests, and Kit (Amy Steel) remains convinced she caught a fleeting glimpse of his dead body. When the group try to make contact with the police, they learn the lines are down and the ferryman won't be returning to the island for another few days. It isn't long before other members of the party go missing and m.u.f.fy's behaviour becomes a cause for concern. When Nikki (Deborah Goodrich) and young Harvey (Jay Baker) trek into the woods to draw water from a well, Nikki drops her flashlight. She descends into the well to retrieve the light and finds the lifeless corpses of her three friends.

Director Fred Walton returned to make his second slasher movie following his debut as a writer and director seven years before on When a Stranger Calls (1979). This would be the beginning of a long stream of directorial ventures, which would keep him on film sets well into the next decade. The executives at Paramount Pictures regarded Walton's project as an opportunity to revive the bloodthirsty phenomenon, for which they had been instrumental six years before with Friday the 13th. Following the success of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the genre had fallen into a downward spiral of self-parody with Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985) momentarily bringing one of the studio's largest franchises to a grinding halt. Producer Frank Mancuso Jr. wanted to revitalize the slasher movie and when he was approached by Danilo Bach, fresh from his success on Beverley Hills Cop (1984), he was very keen to give it a go. The script would adhere to a formula that had become accepted practice, reintroducing the holiday theme, throwing in the obligatory red herrings, toying with incredulous plot twists and revealing secrets at every turn before chasing through the house to dispose of virtually the entire cast. Bach, however, delivered a surprise ending, which in slasher circles still has many people talking. The mood for much of the early part of the film is naturally light, with good-natured antics abounding on a scene-to-scene basis. Slasher devotees, however, have always despaired of its unsatisfactory level of gore, which, coupled with its late entry to the field, probably led to it being almost instantly forgotten. The island setting, along with the unsettling revelations and continual disappearances have prompted innumerable comparisons with Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians", and more specifically Rene Clair's And Then There Were None (1945), an adaptation of Christie's play. To their credit Frank Mancuso Jr.'s team captured the very essence of the slasher phenomena, but at the box office it was just a few years too late and maybe displayed a little too much intelligence. Following its release to DVD more than twenty years later, April Fool's Day has finally found an appreciative audience and in turn justified Paramount's faith.

IN AN ANONYMOUS Brazilian town, Ze do Caixo (Coffin Joe, played by Jose Mojica Marins) considers only the perfect woman could ever bear him a child worthy of his bloodline. The Nietzschean Coffin Joe is the town's bullying undertaker and is disparaging of the townsfolk's fervent Catholicism. His only concern is the need to maintain the "continuity of the blood". Sadly, his wife Lenita (Valeria Vasquez) cannot bear children, so Coffin Joe begins to look elsewhere. To further his pursuit he first murders his wife as the locals enjoy a religious festival, binding her up and leaving her to confront a poisonous spider. When her body is later discovered, the police have absolutely nothing to link him with the murder, leaving Coffin Joe free to continue in his quest. Fulfilling the predictions of a local gypsy (Eucaris Moraes) he brutally murders his best friend, Antonio (Nivaldo Lima), leaving his grieving girlfriend Terezinha (Magda Mei) ripe for seduction. In his efforts to win her heart, he buys her a canary and then, blinded by l.u.s.t during the course of their conversation, he becomes a little too amorous. When Terezinha rejects his advances, Coffin Joe attacks and rapes her. Terezinha curses him, vowing to kill herself then return to drag his soul to h.e.l.l. He retorts with a sneer, but the next day she is found suspended with a rope around her neck in the living room of her home. Coffin Joe's activities haven't gone unnoticed; the town's doctor, Dr Rudolfo, now has his suspicions. When he becomes aware of the doctor's reservations, he decides to pay him a visit. Soon after his arrival, he sets about the fearful doctor, finally gouging out his eyes with his long fingernails before setting his body alight.

Some days later on the Day of the Dead celebrations, Coffin Joe encounters the beautiful young Marta. He is certain she is the woman who will bear his children. In the late evening, he takes her home, only to be confronted by the gypsy who foresaw the deaths of Antonio and Terezinha. She warns the murderous undertaker his soul is already forfeit to the spirits of those he has murdered and Satan himself will come for him when the clock strikes midnight. Soon after leaving Marta in the company of her relatives, he is beset by the same ghostly figures of which the gypsy had foretold. In fear he turns and runs for his life, little realizing he has stumbled upon the vault where both Antonio and Terezinha lie buried. As his mind frantically races, he forces open their coffins in the hope of finding they are still dead. Their eyes stare back at him from within their darkened tomb as maggots immerse their wasted faces. Coffin Joe's terrified screams can be heard away in the town. When the locals enter the vault, they find his horribly disfigured body with his eyes left opened wide to the world just like those he murdered. In the distance, the toll of a bell can be heard, ringing out the stroke of midnight.

Originally shot in thirteen days in 1963, At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, (a Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma) lays claim to being Brazil's first horror movie. This marks the first instalment of Jose Mojica Marins' existential "Coffin Joe trilogy", to be followed by This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967), and Embodiment of Evil (2008). There were also three other entries to the Coffin Joe mythos, The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968), The Awakening of the Beast (O Despertar da Besta) (1969), banned in Brazil for twenty years owing to its treatment of drugs, prost.i.tution and police corruption, and Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind (Delirios de um Anormal) (1978). Marins' creation has been considered as a precursor to the leering psychopath Freddy Kreuger and, in a similar way to his treacherous heir, would go on to become a celebrity figure, making it to the stage, screen and national television before going on to comic books. Marins not only wrote and directed the film; when he couldn't find an actor who could take his creation seriously, he a.s.sumed the role himself, using an expressionistic style that harked back to the villains of the earliest days of cinema. With a pitiful budget, an amateur cast and only one studio in which all but a few of the scenes were shot, he put together a gruesome feature that was an unrepentant challenge to his country's Catholicism. His film was shot in black and white, but after half a century, many of the darkened scenes are no longer entirely black. While this feature may have been shot in monochrome, it didn't detract from the viciousness presented in certain scenes, with the intensity of the eye gouging coming fifteen years before Fulci's predilection for this dehumanizing brutality. Later in his career, he would be forced to move into p.o.r.nography when he produced the highly controversial yet lucrative 24 Hours of Explicit s.e.x (1985). As a cult phenomenon Marins is revered and his contribution to the world of horror should never be underestimated.

AFTER MANY YEARS of loyalty to the memory of his deceased wife, television producer s.h.i.+geharu Aoyama (Ryo Is.h.i.+bas.h.i.+) contemplates finding someone to share his life. He speaks of his loneliness to his friend Yasuhisha Yos.h.i.+kawa (Jun Kunimura), a fellow producer, who devises a hoax audition for a film with the intention of finding Aoyama a new wife. Yos.h.i.+kawa puts together a plethora of resumes and asks his forlorn friend to choose thirty women to attend the audition. Prior to the big day, Aoyama becomes smitten by one girl in particular, Asami Yamazaki (Eihi s.h.i.+na), a shy young woman dressed in virginal white. Yos.h.i.+kawa finds her a little unnerving, but relents, knowing his long-time friend is completely besotted. Aoyama finds himself drawn closer to the girl, even though there are unanswered questions about some of her former acquaintances who are no longer to be heard from. When their relations.h.i.+p becomes strained, Aoyama decides to call Asami; her apartment appears empty, but her figure can be seen sitting by the telephone with a large canvas bag towards the rear of the room. When the phone rings, the canvas bag begins to violently twitch. The unfeeling inflection in Asami's smile chills the viewer to the bone; Yos.h.i.+kawa's initial a.s.sessment of the girl would appear to have been correct. There is now a change in tone to Audition, as it becomes Asami's account of the trauma she faced at the hands of an uncaring older man but it does not excuse one of the most excruciating scenes ever to be committed to celluloid.

Audition was but one of five films directed by the inexhaustible Takas.h.i.+ Miike during the year 2000, which for him was nothing out of the ordinary. When compared to so much of his immense catalogue of films this is by far one of his most challenging creations, bearing a narrative energy rarely seen in the horror genre. For much of the early part of his film, both he and writers Ryu Murakami and Daisuke Tengan almost convinced their audience this was a whimsical romancing; only Yos.h.i.+kawa's sense of apprehension ever suggested anything different. The last forty minutes proved to be some of the most unsettling in the director's accomplished career, thanks to the writing of novelist Ryu Murakami and the disturbingly surreal screenplay of Daisuke Tengan, which Miike admits to having toned down. It has been insinuated that this is a feminist revenge story, but there are layers of subtext to this film, which continue to confound so many horror devotees; yet equally the violence in the finale has distanced the admirers of more cerebral cinema. The ambiguity surrounding the final third of the film raises questions as to whether this is truly Asami's tale or Aoyama's guilt-laden dreams for what he considers the betrayal of his deceased wife coupled with his treatment of Asami during the fake audition. The finale, however, remains one of the most graphic portrayals observed in horror cinema, largely due to the audience's empathic bond with the distraught Aoyama.

A SEEMINGLY ORDINARY YOUNG man from the sticks, Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck), arrives in New York City and takes residence in a seedy Times Square hotel. In his possession is a large wicker basket hiding a hideous secret. Hidden within is his grotesque parasitic half-aborted Siamese twin, Belial, whose deformities are such that few people would ever consider him human. Belial resembles a twisted lump of gristle, armed with a pair of claws, yet retains a chillingly human face.

In a flashback sequence, we learn their mother died tragically in childbirth and consequently their father grew to despise them. Still embittered by the death of his wife and afflicted by the shame he feels for the freak-show to which he unwittingly gave life, he is driven to have the twins surgically separated. This would give Duane a chance of a normal life, but neither brother wants to endure this operation. Their father refuses to listen; instead he turns to three doctors of dubious repute. Not even they consider Belial to be human. When the procedure has been completed, he is declared dead. He then suffers the indignity of being disposed with the rubbish. However, he is far from being dead; and now he wants revenge.

After killing their father, the twins are raised by a kindly aunt until her death a few years later. This is where we join the film; the twins are in New York, now with telepathic abilities, seeking unholy retribution against the three doctors responsible for separating them. So follow three days of slaughter, each falling victim to Belial's cruel claws. Belial's final killing is a girl for whom Duane has fallen, leading to the finale, hanging from the window of their hotel room, before they finally fall. The quality of the gore may have been appallingly low in budget, but it was vicious and there was plenty of it.

When stripped down, the shoestring budget comedy horror Basket Case was a tragic tale of brotherly love and the jealousy that comes with it. Since its release to video, it has gone on to acquire a miraculous cult following which belies its diminutive status and is now considered a cla.s.sic of exploitation cinema. Under Frank Henenlotter's inventive direction, his story took advantage of the discomfort people find with human deformity and s.h.i.+fts from the plain ridiculous to grindhouse grim, scoured in neon reds and blues, making the sleazy surroundings dirtier and all the more grungy. Belial was a remarkable piece of design; while ludicrous in appearance, Henenlotter's stop-motion gore succeeded in evoking an unexpected degree of threat. Basket Case was later known as House of Freaks and was to inspire a couple of sequels, Basket Case 2 (1990) and Basket Case 3: The Progeny (1991), both directed by Frank Henenlotter.

AT THE DAWN of the twenty-second century, j.a.pan has fallen into social and economic turmoil. With unemployment spiralling out of control, j.a.panese youth begin to rebel and turn their back on school. The government's reaction is to pa.s.s legislation designed to terrify the country into a semblance of order and so comes the draconian edict they call the BR Act. Its stipulations result in a group of forty-two students from a j.a.panese high school being ordered to compete in a new reality television show. They are each given a bag which contains a randomly selected weapon and some food and water. After collecting their bag, they are then sent to an isolated island to kill one another in a bizarre game that in three days' time will leave only one survivor. An electronic collar fitted with explosives ensures that each of the students complies with the rules; any defiance means instant death. While Shuya, Noriko, and Kawada try to escape the island, their psychotic cla.s.smates begin to play this bloodthirsty game.

Veteran j.a.panese director Kinji f.u.kasaku's Battle Royale was based on the controversial novel written by former reporter Koushun Takami. Although his book went on to become a bestseller in his homeland, its violent content led to its expulsion from the literary compet.i.tion for which it had been intended. The judges were unable to see beyond the obvious excess in Takami's thought-provoking work and failed to recognize the meaninglessness in his brutal portrayal. Sadly, for Kinji f.u.kasaku this would be his final film, having directed over sixty movies in an impressive career spanning forty years. When Battle Royale was being prepared for its j.a.panese release, f.u.kasaku insisted that its b.l.o.o.d.y display laced with the darkest of humour should be open for teenagers over the age of fifteen; he was resolute in his insistence that this age group should be aware of the damage they were causing across the country. The censors, however, were unhappy with its excess, fearing it trivialized youth violence, and would only make it available to the over-eighteens; there was also the fear this film could be the catalyst that stirred up riots among an already troubled j.a.panese youth. f.u.kasaku was incensed; he went away to produce an edited version so that a younger audience could become aware of the message contained in his film. He managed to convince the censors and the movie opened to audiences of fifteen and over, although many observers consider the edited version to be more brutal than the original. Due to its contentious nature, Battle Royale's critical reception across j.a.pan was somewhat mixed and following the Columbine High School killings of 1999 f.u.kasaku's film had a troubled time in the United States. However, its success at the j.a.panese box office was to produce a sequel in 2003, Battle Royale II: Requiem. f.u.kasaku would shoot only one scene before his death; it was left to his son Kenta, who had written both screenplays, to bring this follow-up to fruition.

MORE THAN HALF a century ago in the year 1927, in scenes reminiscent of the cla.s.sic Universal horror movies of the 1930s and 1940s, torch-wielding villagers descend on the Louisiana home of a painter named Schweick (Antoine Saint-John), a man who had stepped too far into the darkness. They force him down into the depths of the cellar, where he warns them that the house was constructed over one of the seven gateways to h.e.l.l, and claims only he has the power to save them. The mob refuse to listen to him, and in a graphic scenes that had already become a trademark of Lucio Fulci's cinematic work, they chain him up and take a whip to his body before impaling his arms and legs in an excruciating crucifixion.

Over half a century later, a New Yorker, Liza Merril (Catriona MacColl), inherits the same house, and prepares to refurbish the old place. As the build gets under way, there is a series of inexplicable occurrences. A painter falls to his death, another man suffers a broken neck and then a plumber uncovers Schweick's atrophied corpse hidden behind a wall in the cellar. He may have met his death over fifty years before, but Schweick is still intent on revenge and is brutal in his gouging of the plumber's eyes. Lisa is later advised by a blind woman, by the name of Emily (Sarah Keller), she must leave this accursed house. This same woman was also seen during the film's prelude, in what was an appreciably Lovecraftian series of frames. Dr John McCabe (David Warbeck) and his a.s.sistant Dr Harris (Al Cliver) are baffled as they examine the two corpses found in the cellar. At the same time, McCabe finds himself attracted to Lisa and tries to help her in understanding these mystifying events. They soon have to come to terms with the shattering fact that the gateway to h.e.l.l lies beneath the house and it has been thrown open to allow the dead to walk the Earth. A mob of zombies, in truth no more than half a dozen in what was a comparatively low budget presentation, are seen lurching towards the bewildered couple, calling for them to dart down one of the hospital's many stairwells only to stumble into the bas.e.m.e.nt of the hotel. Still hoping to escape this seeming hallucination, they climb through a hole in the wall, only to become lost on the shadowed plains of h.e.l.l, blighted by the knowledge they will never find their way home.

Lucio Fulci's E Tu Vivrai Nel Terrore L'aldila has also been released as the disappointingly abridged Seven Doors of Death and marked the closing instalment in his zombie quartet, preceded by Zombi 2, also known as Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), City of the Living Dead (1980) and House by the Cemetery (1981). It is also acknowledged as the finale to his unofficial Gates of h.e.l.l series, heralded by City of the Living Dead and House by the Cemetery. Make-up man Giannetto De Rossi overcame the derisory budget to create an impressive series of effects that shocked the audience and ultimately accentuated the brutality in a feature that would have repercussions across the globe. The cast had their eyeb.a.l.l.s gouged, were subjected to impalement, had their tongues ripped out, their heads blown off, and as in all Italian splatter movies of note gasped as their throats were duly severed. It contained the excess that fans of the genre craved and was enhanced by the surreal photography of Sergio Salvati, who observed a perception for the Gothic and enhanced the apocalyptic milieu with a succession of haunting images; yet when required he remained crisp and made extraordinary use of zoom focusing to exacerbate the shocks.

In his quest to make an "Absolute Film" where image and sound transcend the movie's individual elements, Fulci adopted a nonlinear structure to his narrative, causing absolute frustration for the casual viewer. The plot at times appeared devoid of logic and was open in its defiance of convention, yet its visual splendour continues to beguile. Ideas once espoused by Antonin Artoud along with the writings of H. P. Lovecraft were to have a major influence on this feature; indeed Artoud's controversial approach was evident in so much of Fulci's work from these years. As founder of "The Theatre of Cruelty", Artoud had looked to "Restore to the theatre a pa.s.sionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based on must be understood". Fulci looked to use these ideas and succeeded in his d.a.m.ning vision that lay beyond the Gates of h.e.l.l.

His extreme visualization of violence again attracted the regulatory enc.u.mbrance of the censors. In the United Sates, his film was heavily toned down and issued as Seven Doors of Death. On its release to cinemas in the United Kingdom, it was edited by one minute and thirty-nine seconds, removing much of the film's excess. Only eighteen months after its release to video, its explicit content had The Beyond pilloried as a video nasty in November 1983. It was later removed from the offending register in April 1985 but wasn't to find distribution in its unedited form until 2002. Fulci has been the target of much criticism, but the influence of this movie can be seen in Sam Raimi's exploits with The Evil Dead (1983) and it was also to have a bearing on images seen in both h.e.l.lraiser (1987) and Dellamorte Dellamore (1996).

SAM DALMAS (TONY Musante), an American writer working in Rome with his girlfriend Giulia (Suzy Kendall), witnesses the attempted murder of Monica Ranieri (Eva Renzi), the wife of a gallery owner, by a black-gloved a.s.sailant wearing a raincoat. Trapped between two automatic gla.s.s doors, Sam is unable to come to her aid and can only watch in horror as the villain makes his escape. The investigating officers are forced to take possession of Sam's pa.s.sport, believing he holds a piece of information that is key to leading them to the arrest of the man they suspect of several other murders in the city. Although Monica survived the attack, Sam can't get the events of that night out of his mind and it is no surprise when both he and his girlfriend become p.a.w.ns in the killer's deadly game. When he receives a telephone call from the a.s.sa.s.sin he picks upon a particular sound, which turns out to be the cry of a rare species they call "The Bird with Crystal Plumage". There is only one such bird in Rome and that resides in the city zoo. As Argento toys with his audience, the police go through the usual list of deviant suspects while Sam, who is living on the edge of his nerves, continues his investigation, culminating in a taut chase through a darkened building.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage marked Dario Argento's ascent to the director's chair, after penning several thrillers along with a number of war films and a spaghetti western. The inspiration for his movie, which would establish the stylistic elements of the giallo for the next decade, had taken shape in Fredric Brown's novel The Screaming Mimi, written in 1949. Brown's mystery tale had already been directed by Gerd Oswald for its Hollywood release as Screaming Mimi in 1958, but his feature would never have dared elicit the lurid display and then engage the violence of Argento's film, an undertaking largely financed by his father. Ennio Morricone's ominous score combined with Vittorio Storaro's opulent cinematography that made abundant use of point-of-view stalking both served to overcome the obvious holes in the plot; and Argento engineered the suspense just as Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k had before him to lead to what in its day was a quite shocking finale. The killer's garb had been seen only a few years before in Mario Bava's seminal Blood and Black Lace (1964), as had elements detected in the explicit murder scenes. However, few in his audience would have been aware of this, so dazzled would they have been by the ambition in Argento's stylish technique that would one day become the hallmark for his mastery of the genre. This same audience would not have known there were those involved with the production who had wanted him removed from his position as director very early on in the shoot.

Although The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was by no means as gruesome as Argento's later masterpieces, edits of twenty seconds were demanded when it was submitted for release in the United States. Eight seconds were removed from the shots dwelling on the killer ripping the panties off one of the victims and a further twelve seconds were cut from the elevator scene showing a woman having her face slashed with a razor prior to its issue as The Gallery Murders. The BBFC approved this American R edit without any further changes and then, finally, after a thirty-year wait Argento fans in both Britain and the US got to see his debut in its uncut form.

CHRISTMAS COMES BUT once a year; for some of these girls, however, it will never come again. A snow-covered college campus introduces the Bob Clark-directed Black Christmas, as an indistinct figure peers into the windows of a large sorority house where a Christmas party is being held. In a point-of-view shot, later used to equal effect by John Carpenter in his preface to Halloween, the audience is as close to the prowler as they ever could be as he moves from the periphery of the house to ascend a trellis before slipping into the former mansion through an attic window. Once in the house he clambers down the attic trap door and secretes himself somewhere upstairs, observing the joyous girls from the shadows of the stairway.

The phone calls had initially seemed nothing more than a childish prank, but their tone has changed and while there is excitement at the party, these calls have started to unnerve this ill-fated gathering as they prepare for the festive holiday season. Barbie's (Margot Kidder) invective shrieking down the phone acts only to incite the caller. His response is a calmly delivered death threat, made all the more chilling by the abrupt manner in which he puts down the receiver.

The first victim is the innocent doe of the house, Clare (Lynne Griffin), who after a row with the abrasive Barbie retires to her room. She never gets there. The psychopath deviously lures her with a mocking meow made to sound like the house cat, then suffocates her in plastic wrap, before dragging her body away to conceal in the attic. Hidden away in the attic he sits Clare's lifeless body in a rocking chair adjacent to the window, with the plastic bag still pulled tightly over her head. Just before making his leave he rests a doll in her lap, mumbling the name Agnes. Our killer it would appear has also been traumatized. Downstairs, life goes on with the other girls oblivious to Clare's death. It is only when her father arrives to collect his daughter for the holidays we learn that no one has laid eyes on her since the quarrel with Barbie. It isn't long before a young girl's body is found by a search party investigating another disappearance.

As these grisly events unfold, Jessica Bradford (Olivia Hussey) has to confront a dilemma in her own life, one that will have a major bearing on the outcome of this film. Having discovered she is pregnant she has to seriously consider an abortion, but boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea), whose behaviour is erratic throughout, is bitterly opposed to any such suggestion. His unhinged temperament makes him an increasingly likely suspect as one by one the girls in the house begin to disappear.

When a sedated Jessica is left alone in the company of a guard, director Clark cunningly deceives the audience, letting them believe his film has reached its climax. The guard, however, is unconscious and those who have been at the centre of this drama are seen taking their leave, convinced the killer has been revealed. A deathly silence comes down on the house, as the attic door begins to open. The camera takes the audience up into the attic where the bodies of both Clare and the housekeeper have remained unnoticed. The killer now descends from the attic and is heard to utter the words "Agnes, it's me, Billy!" Just before the credits begin to role a lone police officer is seen on the front porch as once again the phone begins to ring.

Black Christmas, also briefly known as Silent Night, Evil Night on its US theatrical release, was inspired by a series of murders that occurred during the Christmas period in Quebec. For a long time forgotten by so many horror fans, this film bears many of the hallmarks of the slasher frenzy that would sweep across the film industry as the decade drew to a close. These would include a delightful cast of sorority girls, bawdy antics, s.e.xual tension, dark comedy, an even darker house and a long knife, along with close-in shots that were designed to convey the killer's perspective. Bob Clark succeeded in maintaining the tension, refusing to neither provide an explanation for the killer's motives nor divulge his ident.i.ty, which in more modern terrors would have resulted in a sequel. He also created a highly ambiguous finale that was to frustrate many of those when they first saw it, again demanding a follow up.

In a similar way to John Carpenter in his seminal movie, Clark chose to avoid an excess of gore, even as his body count continued to grow. Rather, he used the element of tension, and carefully paced the scares through the shadows and goaded with the ominous presence of the killer hidden within. On its release, there were those who considered this a thriller, but the presence of a mysterious killer armed with a sharp knife and a gathering of vulnerable young girls made it worthy of the then popular giallo. Carl Zittrer's score added to this impression of this Italian trend, as he skilfully augmented the sense of perturbation, later explaining that he tied forks, combs and knives to the strings of the piano with a mind to distorting the sound of the keys. The result remains very unsettling. The semblance to the giallo and the lack of blood may have for so many years consigned Black Christmas as a mere footnote in the history of the slasher movie. By 1980, the rulebook to the cinematic American slasher had almost been drawn up, but in 1974 makers of such films would have been very much inspired by the giallo of Italian lore. A case in point is the murder of the chaste Clare, who was the first to face the killer's wrath in rather horrific circ.u.mstances; such a killing would have been inconceivable in either Halloween (1978) or Friday the 13th (1980). Meanwhile Jessica, who in both of the these films would have been condemned well before the finale for being s.e.xually active and daring to consider an abortion, made it to the end, although it remains a matter of debate as to whether she actually survived.

While Black Christmas now receives generally positive reviews, the critics of the day weren't entirely disposed to this feature, which was seen as being cliched and exploitative. The cliche at this point can have only been derived from gialli such as Mario Bava's landmark A Bay of Blood (1971), because North American cinema had not attempted a film of this ilk and on such a scale. Bob Clark's film went on to be nominated by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films as "Best Horror Film" in 1976, and in the same year in the Edgar Allan Poe Awards received a nomination for "Best Motion Picture". In the Canadian Film Awards for 1975 it won "Best Sound Editing in a Feature" and Margot Kidder picked up the "Best Performance by a Lead Actress". On its release in Britain, the BBFC removed several expletives in addition to s.e.xual references made during the obscene phone call scenes.

A remake directed by Glen Morgan was released on December 25, 2006. This version was only loosely based on the original, opting for a more graphic portrayal and dwelled on the mystery surrounding Billy, thus removing much of the ambiguity in Bob Clark's creepy finale.

IN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Moldavia a beautiful witch, Asa Vajda (Barbara Steele), and her lover Javuto (Arturo Dominici) are sentenced to death by her own brother. As they are hauled to the stake to burn for their sorcerous crimes, Asa swears revenge and curses her brother's lineage. Her fate is sealed by an iron mask lined with sharpened spikes, which is locked firmly over her head and then forcefully hammered into her face. Blood is seen to ooze from the mask.

Two hundred years later on a storm-ridden night, Dr Thomas Kruvajan (Andrea Checchi) and his a.s.sistant Dr Andre Gorobec (John Richardson) are observed crossing through this same region when one of the wheels of their carriage shatters. As the coach driver repairs the wheel, the doctors stumble upon the crypt where Asa has been laid to rest. As he attempts to thwart an annoying bat, Kruvajan breaks the panel enshrouding the dead witch's tomb. Curiosity insists he remove the death mask, but as he does some of his blood drips onto Asa's pallid face. Kruvajan has no knowledge of what he has done and returns with his a.s.sistant to the carriage. Here they are greeted by Katia (also played by Barbara Steele) who lives with her family in a nearby castle. Gorobec can't help but be enchanted by her ravis.h.i.+ng beauty.

In the darkened shadows of the crypt, Asa is seen rising from the dead. She uses her malevolent sorcery to rejuvenate her lover and then makes her way to the castle still owned by Katia's family, with evil in mind. After seducing Kruvajan to her vampiric domain, Asa turns her attention to the beautiful young girl. She believes that if she can drain Katia's blood, she will gain eternal life. Gorborec must now do all he can to save Katia from the vengeful witch's clutches. La Maschera del Demonio, also known as Revenge of the Vampire and The Mask of Satan, was Mario Bava's first credited directorial work and is acknowledged to be one of the most beautifully photographed films in the history of horror cinema. Shot in black and white, Bava conjured with light and shade to create a Gothic masterpiece reminiscent of the Universal horror movies of two decades past. The influence of Italian director Riccardo Freda and the expressionist Fritz Lang were in evidence in so much of this film, and as the horse-drawn carriage pulls up who can deny the homage to F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922). While Bava's film does observe a coherent plot, his real interest lay in creating an air of dread and supplementing this with gloomy but captivating visuals. As an admirer of Russian fantasy and horror, he based his feature on the short story "Vij" written by the Ukrainian born Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol in 1865 and later released as the Soviet Union's first horror film in 1967. However, the final screenplay, which endured so many redrafts during filming, owed precious little to the original. Indeed if Hammer hadn't enjoyed success with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958) in Italy, Bava may never have had the chance to produce such an atmospheric cla.s.sic. Black Sunday also heralded the arrival of sensuous horror icon Barbara Steele, in one of her most memorable roles. While she struggled with the Italian language, the young actress's macabre beauty cast a spell over her audience and would see her rise to a.s.sume the role as the dark queen of horror for decades to come. Her introduction to the world of Italian horror came with a scene laced in s.e.xuality, which was rife with more explicit violence and gore than anything so far committed to film. The opening sequence focusing on the iron mask being driven into Steele's face resulted in the film being banned in the UK until 1968. Similarly there were problems in the United States when the distributor AIP had to remove over three minutes of footage detailing the burning "S" being branded into Asa's flesh and the blood spurting from the infamous spiked mask, the eyeball staking of the vampiric Kruvajan, and the flesh peeling from Katia's father's face, all to make the film more acceptable. While Bava's film was only moderately successful in Italy, it generated a huge turnover across Europe and America and received much critical acclaim before going on to influence a generation of horror filmmakers. Tim Burton would use its sublime imagery during the production of Sleepy Hollow (1999) and Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) also paid homage to several key scenes from Bava's masterpiece.

RELEASED IN ITALY as Sei Donne Per L'a.s.sa.s.sino, Mario Bava's film opened with a prowling camera homing in on the brutal murder of the gorgeous model Isabella (Francesca Ungaro) in the grounds of a fas.h.i.+onable "haute couture" house in the city of Rome. What followed would bear so many of the hallmarks of the infamous Italian giallo, rather than the Edgar Wallace-styled murder mystery for which the German backers had hoped. Such detective tales had proven very popular, but Bava's film would become recognized as one the earliest and most influential of this uniquely Italian genre. Poor Isabella met her death as a thunderstorm played out a raging drama in the skies over the city. These scenes, laced with the lurid s.e.xuality only recently observed in Hitchc.o.c.k's Psycho (1960), would have you believe the temptation in her beauty provoked this darkened figure who on this occasion was disguised by a mask rather than the customary black leather gloves of the gialli that followed. The case is a.s.signed to the self-a.s.sured Inspector Silvestri (Thomas Reiner), who soon uncovers a web of drugs, corruption and blackmail in this seemingly respectable establishment. His investigation very soon draws up a list of likely suspects. Among them are the owner Ma.s.simo Morlacchi (Cameron Mitch.e.l.l), the wealthy Ricardo Morellin (Franco Ressel), who turns out to have been having an affair with Isabella, the dress designer Cesar Lazzarini (Louis Pigot), and Isabella's boyfriend Frank (Dante Di Paolo) an antique shop owner who supplied cocaine to some of the models.

As the events unfold, we learn Isabella was not the victim of a s.e.x-crazed killer; rather, her fate was sealed when she started to detail a series of improprieties at the fas.h.i.+on house in the pages of her diary. The same mysterious figure dressed in black now makes another appearance, this time in the darkened antique shop owned by her former antique dealing drug-peddling boyfriend Frank. On this occasion, the shadowed figure seizes a clawed mallet and strikes at another model, Nicole (Ariana Gorini). Convinced she now has the diary, he hits her squarely across the face. Stunned by the blow she continues to struggle, but alas, to no avail, she falls to become his second victim. And so the torture and murder continues as this sinister figure leaves in his wake an ever-growing body count of scantily clad beautiful young girls, but fails to locate the incriminating diary. In the course of his scurrilous activities, he shows himself to be an expert with a sharpened blade in addition to asphyxiation by pillow, but his most dastardly moment comes when a model's face is forced down onto a scalding furnace.

As would have been expected of a time-served cinematographer of such eminence, although Bava never considered himself as such, the balance created between the light and shadow coupled with the distinctive colour filters elevated the photography in this movie, placing it above so much of the highly competent film making of the period. This visual splendour would have his feature lauded as "decorative horror", but there were those, including American International Pictures, who had serious misgivings as to its lurid portrayal and the explicit nature of the murder scenes. Reviews at the time were mixed; it was only when film historians began to re-appraise Bava's work that the significance of Blood and Black Lace in the evolution of the giallo was finally recognized.

THE CAMERA DRAWS its focus on a female student showering behind a semi-transparent curtain. As she dries herself, an intruder stealthily makes his way upstairs and then, brandis.h.i.+ng a meat cleaver, explodes into the bathroom. In a series of cleverly re-enacted shots made to resemble Herschel G. Lewis's Blood Feast (1963), he begins to hack wildly at her exposed body causing a flow of blood to splatter across the room. The poor girl is left for dead as the killer takes off with her severed arm. A prologue then tries to suggest there is an element of truth to this tale, telling of a series of grisly murders, perpetrated at a mid-western college in the fall of 1985.

The slaughter continues as the killer beats another girl to death with her friend's severed head. The local sheriff now steps in to solve the case, but with the murders beginning to escalate his hopes of succeeding in the forthcoming election seem increasingly remote. The only clue is an amulet found at the scene of each of the murders. Tina, the sheriff's daughter who works as a librarian, traces the amulet to an eighteenth-century coven of witches. Down through the ages this cult has continued in its quest to seek retribution on those who accused its ilk of witchery in 1692. Almost mirroring Lewis's Blood Feast, the cult is convinced that with the ritualistic a.s.semblage of the body parts of their victims, their revenge will be complete and a demonic G.o.d will arise as their champion.

There is some conjecture as to whether this was the first movie made for the home video market, because John Wintergate's nubile terror Boarding House was thought to be the first real shot on video film dating back to 1982, although it did make it into several American cinemas. Blood Cult (also known as Slasher) has, however, garnered a trashy reputation on being the first of its kind and has since promoted itself on the auspices of being a b.l.o.o.d.y slasher. While there was indeed a sanguinary flow to the opening bathroom murder, the remainder of Christopher Lewis's film was unusually devoid of the essential torrent of blood. However, in the film's defence, the production values were appreciably more sophisticated than those of its bloodthirsty contemporaries, although the acting again betrayed the film's amateur status. This was bona fide low-budget filmmaking and while the film stock supplied for Paul McFarlane's camera work was at times grainy, it was to enhance the feature's unwholesome aura and provided more than the occasional moment to savour.

BLOOD FEAST WAS the first part of a collection of films the director's dedicated following have christened "The Blood Trilogy", with Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965) providing the remaining entries in this triumvirate. This is looked upon as the first true splatter movie, rivalled only by n.o.buo Nakagawa's Jigoku, although there are those who look upon its content as being hopelessly amateurish with few if any redeeming qualities. In its defence, Blood Feast was made in only nine days with a hopelessly limited budget.

In a suburban Miami house, an attractive young woman listens to her portable radio, which carries the announcement of yet another murder, one of several in only a matter of days. She turns off the broadcast to enjoy the soothing warmth of her bath, only to be rudely interrupted. At this point in his film Hitchc.o.c.k conceived the memorable shower scene; Lewis opted for a soap-filled bath with a mind to t.i.tillating his audience. The nudity from these shots never made it to the final cut. A greying wild-eyed man suddenly appears in the bathroom and frenziedly stabs the hapless woman through her left eye. As she lies dead, he hacks off her left leg and then makes his escape with it. While not particularly well put together, this level of graphic violence was very new to American cinema; its sole intention was to shock and that's exactly what it did!

At Fuad Ramses' catering store, a wealthy socialite has requested that Fuad arrange the catering for her daughter Suzette's party. He readily agrees, explaining to his eager client, Mrs Freemont, his intention to present to her guests cuisine that hasn't been prepared in over 5,000 years. The party is only two weeks away, leaving Fuad just enough time to acquire the last of his ingredients. In the storage room to the rear of the premises, he stands before a large gold statue of the "mother of veiled darkness", the G.o.ddess Ishtar. He refers to her as being Egyptian, although she is actually of a.s.syrian and Babylonian origin, but her affiliation with s.e.xuality is quite in keeping with Lewis's lurid design for this film. The diabolical Fuad's scheme is now revealed: he seeks the G.o.ddess's resurrection by returning to an ancient blood rite and a concoction made up of the body parts of the dead women. The ensuing atrocities are inflicted on young girls from the surrounding area: a brain is removed from a teenager, a tongue severed from a young wife, and the face sliced from an innocent woman. Each become essential to the consummation of Fuad's diabolical blood feast. The final victim is kidnapped, held hostage in his store and then whipped until the blood flows freely from her back, allowing the evil caterer to gather the final ingredient. Her body is disposed of and later found hacked to pieces by the investigating police.

When his plan to sacrifice Suzette fails, Fuad goes on the run, with the police hot on his tail. There is to be no return for the villain in this piece; he falls to his fate, crushed by a refuse vehicle's compacting blades. The heroic policeman, Pete, Suzette's boyfriend, has the parting line, "he died a fitting end, just like the garbage he was".

The unhinged murderer Fuad Ramses, was described by author Christopher Wayne Curry in his book A Taste of Blood: The Films Of Hersch.e.l.l Gordon Lewis as "the original machete-wielding madman", the forerunner to the characters that would slash their way through Friday the 13th (1980), Halloween (1978) and so many of their ilk of the 1980s. This, coupled with the claim to being the first splatter movie, gives Blood Feast a place in the history of the genre, but on its initial release the critics were far from kind. A Variety review of May 6, 1964 was venomous, describing the film as a "totally inept shocker", "incredibly crude and unprofessional from start to finish", and "an insult even to the most puerile and salacious of audiences". Lewis's film refused to lie down and die. Jack Weis used his ideas to create a partial remake in New Orleans, Mardi Gras Ma.s.sacre (1978) and the DPP made it immortal by listing it as video nasty in July 1983 following its release to video in May 1982. It remained on the list until the end of the crisis. When it was submitted for its 2001 issue to DVD, cuts were demanded to the scene detailing Fuad's final victim as she was chained and manacled along with her fatal whipping with a cat o' nine tails. Only in 2005 were these edits finally waived.

AMIDDLE-AGED MAN returns to his dimly lit home from a business trip and within seconds of him being indoors two shots are fired. He has just walked in to find his wife in bed with another man. Begging forgiveness, he then turns the gun on himself, unaware that a distraught young boy has seen everything that has gone on. As the boy's world falls down around him, he finds solace in his brown flute.

Many years later a patient (Frankie Avalon) is seen escaping from a mental inst.i.tution; before he takes his leave, he checks he has in his possession a familiar small brown flute. At the same time, a young girl named Marion (Donna Wilkes), who is recovering from a horrific car accident, complains of a recurring nightmare in which a homicidal maniac plays a strange tune on what she can only describe as a mouth instrument; he then carves up several innocent people. Marion fears that these are far more than just dreams; they are a premonition of doom. Her visions also reveal the same murderer planning to bury one of his victims in parkland adjacent to a beach. Those around her think that her abusive father, Frank (Richard Jaeckel), is beginning to affect her mind but elsewhere the escapee, Paul, has buried a hatchet into the face of a driver who offered him a lift in his van. With his flute playing acting as an uncanny overture to his penchant for brutal murder, he then strangles his female partner before beginning to stalk Marion, who is somehow linked to him following a blood transfusion.

Blood Song, also released as Dream Slayer, is another near-forgotten slasher of the period, which included in its cast former teen idol Frankie Avalon, who gave a credible performance as the menacing ma.s.s murderer Paul. Philadelphia-born Avalon was only twelve years old when, trumpet in hand, he first appeared on US television and a decade later after a string of hits went on to make teen-oriented beach comedies. His role in this film was a marked departure from his days as a teenage heartthrob, but revealed an obvious talent in his grim portrayal of this unhinged psychopath. Blood Song was also distinguished in being co-produced by former professional wrestler Lenny Montana, who had played Luca Brasi in The G.o.dfather (1972), in this, one of his last films.

Robert Angus and Alan J. Levi's film was not the typical slasher, although part of its more intriguing premise placed it in the same camp as Romano Scavolini's Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (1981) and J. S. Cardone's often surreal The Slayer (1982). While it was not as graphic as much of its ilk, the violence was unduly cruel and its dreamlike qualities would have it one day regarded as a precursor to Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

AQUIET FAMILY WHO reside in a remote area of Sweden suffer at the hands of the drunken father whose bullying behaviour has driven them to the edge of despair. When his abusive behaviour crosses the line, his wife finally comes to the end of her tether and retaliates leaving her husband for dead. The family flee their home, retreating to an abandoned mine high up in the mountains. There they remain in solitude for the next twenty years, and as time goes by they endure an alarming transformation to devolve into grotesquely misshapen savages.

The arrival in the area of the big-haired glam rock band Solid Gold, played by Sweden's eminent glam metal band Easy Action, accompanied by their dubious entourage for the video shoot of their new single "Blood Tracks" brings considerable excitement to this ski resort. However, calamity follows with the first shoot, as an avalanche crashes down the mountainside. Having survived the deluge of ice and snow the video director takes the shoot to the darkened mine shaft and its surrounding buildings, seen at the very beginning of the film. It doesn't take long for the cannibal family to discover there are unwelcome intruders in their domain. Slowly but surely, they hunt these trespa.s.sers down amidst the darkness of the disused machinery, dilapidated furnaces and a labyrinth of pa.s.sages and walkways suspended over a bottomless abyss. There will be no escape as the members of this murderous family make it to the band's ski cabin and drag their victims' bodies back to the mine, keeping some of the women alive for later. At the finale only two survive, rescued by a helicopter as an Easy Action power ballad plays over the bleak landscape. When Kee Marcello of eighties glam metal band Easy Action, and later stadium rockers Europe, approached Mats-Helge Olsson with a view to producing a film, the director was still sat in a prison cell serving the last few months of a sentence for financial irregularities. Upon learning the band had a deal with Warner Bros., B-movie specialist Olsson became very interested and so followed a Swedish heavy metal slasher, strangely reminiscent of Hans Hatwig's all-girl rock blood feast Blodaren (1983), which was later packaged as The Bleeder. Olsson's film, made on an impossible budget, contained themes previously observed in both Death Line (1973) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977), which followed the latter in its l.u.s.t for violent bloodshed. The photography and overall style tried their utmost to appear American, but in so many ways the film failed, appearing awkward with an unappealing a.s.sembly of characters and after so many years of slaughter across the United States and Canada the storyline was now somewhat predictable. However, as his film drew to a close, Olsson created an ambiguity rarely seen in such gorefests, one that would invite many questions and ensure his film would never be forgotten. There was no ambiguity to the make-up and effects, which proved a high point, as did the film's semi nudity, and the killings excelled in being at times quite ingenious. Such was the bloodl.u.s.t in the original edit, four minutes of gore had to be left on the cutting room floor before the video could see release, although an eighty-five minute print of the film is known to exist. Easy Action broke up in 1986 after making two alb.u.ms, but, as in so many of these tales of terror, they returned from the dead in 2006.

AS THEY FOOL around among the gravestones a couple of high-spirited teenagers soon become rather amorous. Feeling certain it will be safer to continue their aroused display away from prying eyes, they climb down into a recently dug grave. The boy's l.u.s.t, however, is cut short when he is beaten to death with a shovel and his girlfriend is then strangled with a skipping rope.

In 1970 in the small town of Meadowvale, California, as the moon eclipsed the sun, throwing the world into temporary darkness, three babies were born. This solar conjunction obscured the planet Saturn, the astrological body holding sway over human emotion. Because of the eclipse, the three children came into this world as a group of uncaring souls, devoid of emotion. Ten Years later, the kids (Billy Jayne, Elizabeth Hoy and Andy Freeman) embark on a violent killing spree, which sends shock waves through this sleepy backwater. Their innocent appearance means the townsfolk never suspect them until it is too late. Those who stand in their way are summarily slaughtered, beginning with their father, bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat, then their schoolteacher, gunned down, and finally they take on the local police. They also demonstrate a fascination for prying on naked teenagers, soon after disposing of them. However, a young boy and his astrology obsessed older sister (Lori Lethin) soon discover their crimes, only to become the new targets of this evil brood. As the body count mounts, the police authorities become increasingly certain a psychotic killer is stalking the town. Following the denouement only the daughter evades arrest; as her mother drives her away to a new life, she promises faithfully to be a good girl. However, as the credits begin to roll the camera frames her latest victim, a murdered truck driver. This low-budget obscurity would have been forgotten if it had not attracted the attention of the killer kids' fraternity, predating Children of the Corn (1984) and standing alongside the superior Village of the d.a.m.ned (1960), Children of the d.a.m.ned (1964) and The Bad Seed (1956). It traded the habitual visceral excess for some rather disturbing images, as the unwholesome triplets wilfully engaged in an a.s.sortment of weaponry. Their murderous ingenuity was such that they were able to make use of virtually anything they laid their hands on, including in their a.r.s.enal a sprinkling of rat poison smeared over the icing of a cake. Their activities were then dutifully recorded in a macabre sc.r.a.pbook, bequeathing an odious testament to their merciless accomplishments. The murderous endeavours of these psychotic cherubs went much further than the misdeeds of the killer kids that had come before them, thus ensuring Ed Hunt's b.l.o.o.d.y Birthday would disconcert its viewers for decades to come.

MIGUEL'S (ALEXANDER WAECHTER) life has been consistently blighted by his severely disfigured face. He doesn't help himself when he disguises himself with a Mickey Mouse mask and attempts to have s.e.x with a girl who mistakes him for her boyfriend. The rejected Miguel is thrown into an uncontrollable rage, which results in him repeatedly stabbing her with a pair of scissors. This unsavoury episode is skilfully guided through the eyes of the mask, using one of the highly favoured traits of the slasher years, the close-up point-of-view camera. After his trial, Miguel is locked away for a five-year period of detention in a mental inst.i.tution, to be eventually released into the care of his sister, Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff). His doctor, however, like many before him, has grave reservations as to his mental state.

a.s.sisted by her wheelchair-bound mother, Manuela runs an isolated boarding school for young women that specializes in foreign languages. As Miguel becomes fascinated with the delightful Angela, intrigue surrounds a power struggle over the owners.h.i.+p of the school. An element of sleaze is then introduced as we learn Miguel and Manuela became involved in an incestuous relations.h.i.+p five years ago. Miguel has designs to resume their affair, which is revealed in several dubious moments of erotica. It was this clandestine relations.h.i.+p that led to his breakdown and could only continue "if we could get rid of everyone". Very soon, death stalks the school corridors as these desirable young girls fall to a maniac killer and Angela is thrown into a fight for her life. Before the curtain falls on b.l.o.o.d.y Moon, she would have to face the sight of her friends' bodies laid around her chalet as the killer crept stealthily through the shadows.

That prolific master of exploitation Jesus Franco, a director with over 190 films to his credit, couldn't resist sampling some of the success enjoyed by Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980). b.l.o.o.d.y Moon was released in Spain as Colegialas Violadas, which literally translates as the emotive Raped Schoolgirls, and would have faced an inevitable backlash as it tried to get past the censors in virtually any country in the world. His film copied elements from one of the earliest slasher movies, Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood (1971), particularly the killing of the vulnerable woman in the wheelchair. This came prior to the killer moving without relent through the female cast, thrusting a knife up behind a woman to show it protruding through her breast, then burning one of his victims, before resorting to a screwdriver stabbing and strangulation by metal tongs. Franco capped it all with the infamous decapitation using a circular saw, while a seemingly willing girl was tied to a concrete block. The beheading on the concrete block inspired the German t.i.tle for this feature Die Sage Des Todes or The Saw Of Death. On this outing, Franco replaced his customary sleaze with an excess of graphic gore, but in between the kills his movie struggled to maintain any sense of pace.

On its cinematic release in the UK, a minute and thirty-eight seconds were removed from the scene showing the girl's decapitation with the circular saw along with the bloodstained b.r.e.a.s.t.s shown earlier in the film. Its subsequent release to video would see it banned as a video nasty in July 1983 for another two years when the furore finally acquiesced. Further cuts were demanded for its reissue in 1993, which included the murder by scissors, two stabbings being merged into one, with the gory close-up removed, deletions to the knife protruding through the girl's breast as well as the subsequent flow of blood, the snake decapitation and the saw decapitation scene, which was completely removed. These cuts did untold damage to what should have been a tawdry piece of exploitation, making the release of 1993 an unsatisfactory addition to the genre. Finally, i