DESTROYER (1988) The worst prison riot in American history results in the assumed escape of serial killer Ivan Moser (Lyle Alzado), who disappears the night of his execution. The soon-abandoned jailhouse becomes the perfect location for a movie crew making a women’s prison flick called Death House Dolls, which turns into a hot set in the most literal sense when Moser returns—whether his return is from the grave is never explained—and torches the warden to a crisp. A cop sent to check the whereabouts of the warden is impaled with a large power drill. The beauty queen star (Lannie Garrett) of the movie-within-the-movie is strangled with her own Miss Dairyland sash, but not before being ridiculed by the director (Anthony Perkins), who smirks with delight when Garrett is slightly shocked by a prop electric chair. Perkins is eventually fried himself after Moser sets the chair to full charge. Aside from good performances by Perkins and Alzado, Destroyer doesn’t have many surprises to offer viewers. Even the gore effects seem to have been snipped prior to the film’s release, although the head-in-the-xerox-machine is a nice gag. But it’s not all bad. After a cat-and-mouse third act, heroine Deborah Foreman sets Moser aflame and finally sends the maniac to a proper death, eliminating any chance for a sequel—a very rare moment in the annals of slasherdom.
EYES OF FIRE (1984) Excommunicated pioneers during the American frontier form a small settlement within uncharted woods haunted by the tortured spirits of murdered French colonialists. One of the settlers (Karlene Crockett), gifted with extrasensory powers, senses danger and has visions of the place’s former occupants being slaughtered at the hands of a forest witch. Not wanting intruders on her land, the witch wages war against the newcomers by sending her inhuman minions to threaten and kill the white men. Considered an early example of American folk horror, Eyes of Fire predates films of a similar nature, including William Friedkin’s The Guardian (1990), and most notably Robert Eggers’s critical darling, The Witch (2015). Often bogged down in a dream-like, nonlinear narrative, Eyes of Fire is nonetheless a well-made film filled with interesting ideas, good acting, and some striking visuals and makeup designs.
THE ZERO BOYS (1986) Wannabe survivalists must put their skills to the test when they encounter deranged woodsmen in this lowbrow Deliverance. Thinking they’re going to be participating in a weekend of mock war games, the characters (a group of competitive teens called the Zero Boys) instead engage in real-life combat after inadvertently trespassing into redneck territory and stumbling onto a farmhouse that’s home to a family of psychopathic hunters. The maniacs play mind games by dropping bodies through trapdoors and setting traps for the characters to fall into. Unlike the menacing antagonists in Deliverance, the hillbillies in The Zero Boys are kept in the shadows and treated more like Jason/Michael/Leatherface/fill-in-the-blank by the filmmakers, thus eliminating any suspense the story could have generated. Instead, the film turns into a cut-rate Just Before Dawn/The Final Terror ripoff that pulls its punches.
