Backwoods – 1988, US, 86m. Director: Dean Crow.
Bloody Birthday – 1981, US, 84m. Director: Ed Hunt.
The Headless Eyes – 1971, US, 80m. Director: Kent Bateman.
Hellhole – 1985, US, 95m. Director: Pierre De Moro.
BACKWOODS (1988) (AKA: Geek) A couple on a weekend excursion in the Kentucky wilderness are alarmed by the amount of chicken heads that litter their campground. That’s because the decapitated animal parts are the work of a drooling redneck named William (Jack O’Hara) who, after consuming raw chicken, enjoys terrorizing city folk. William is the son of a Jed Clampett-like old coot (Dick Kreusser) who swears the boy is harmless, but viewers who’ve seen Deliverance know better. Things grow complicated for the couple when an act of self-defense causes Kreusser to succumb to a heart attack, sending William on a revenge-fueled killing spree. Fortunately, Final Girl Karen (Christine Noonan) is smart and, shedding her bookworm compassion, transforms into a survivalist badass and performs some revenge of her own. Despite being amateurish, silly, and utterly predictable, Backwoods is a hoot. B (Not currently streaming.)
BLOODY BIRTHDAY (1981) Bloody Birthday sounds like a typical teen body count movie—but the twist is the victims are done in by a trio of ten-year-olds born during an eclipse. Without explanation the children begin killing indiscriminately throughout their quiet suburban neighborhood. The first to go are a young couple having sex in the cemetery; the man has his head bashed in and the woman is strangled with a jump rope. The next day, the kids plan to get rid of their stern teacher because she assigns them homework the week of their birthday party. The local cops are baffled by the crimes, but smartypants teen Lori Lethin’s expertise in astrology helps her deduce that the three children were born without the capacity to emote sympathy. It doesn’t come to the surprise of the viewer when Lethin and her younger brother find themselves trapped in a house with the murderous trio in a suspenseful climax. In fact, the only thing that derails this deranged gem is its lackluster ending that, in the tradition of every other eighties horror film, leaves the door open for a sequel. B+ (Currently streaming on Tubi.)
THE HEADLESS EYES (1971) Arthur Malcolm (Bo Brundin) is a struggling, and largely untalented, artist living in New York City. Desperate to pay his rent, Arthur tries to rob a woman but gets his eye gouged out in return. The act of violence fuels both his artistic expression and his rage as Arthur starts slicing people up and (naturally) removing their eyeballs—which he uses to adorn his homemade sculptures (there’s even an “eye” mobile hanging from his ceiling). Unlike Taxi Driver‘s Travis Bickle, or to a lesser degree, Frank Zito in Maniac, we never get a sense of what made Arthur such a bumbling psychotic. The viewer can only assume the failed robbery turned him into the sniveling wimp the film presents him as. In that sense, The Headless Eyes fails miserably. What the movie does offer is a gritty time capsule of early seventies guerrilla filmmaking done by people who weren’t completely lacking in talent. Crude but effective gore and a genuine sense of despair help—but only so much. This is one that requires a certain taste. C (Currently not streaming.)
HELLHOLE (1985) Recurring B.J. and the Bear guest Judy Landers stars in this far-fetched but enjoyable bit of celluloid trash that often resembles a softcore porn film. College student Susan (Landers) witnesses the murder of her mother by a Joe Spinell lookalike and subsequently falls out a window. Suffering from amnesia, Susan is sent to a clinic for the mentally ill, where the majority of the female patients participate in nude catfights before being sent to “Hellhole,” an adjacent building run by the fiendish Dr. Fletcher (Mary Woronov). Fletcher is immorally experimenting with some sort of chemical lobotomy, the recipe for which has yet to be perfected. Her “test subjects” end up dead—or as deranged psychopaths she keeps locked up in a sub-basement prison. Susan stumbles upon Fletcher’s haphazard scheme and becomes the doc’s next target. While Landers is empty but likable, Woronov steals the show as the evil Dr. Fletcher, an egomaniacal closet case who drools over the half-naked women in her care—shortly after killing a patient, Fletcher plants a postmortem kiss. If anything, Hellhole is sleazy eye-candy for the eighties exploitation lover. B– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)