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Review
by
Doug Red
Film:7
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DVD:9
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The stars told me to. |
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Astrology
and the zodiac have been utilized in horrific, suspenseful films
for years as a way to give an off-kilter twist to a story. The
real-life Zodiac Killer was fictionalized under the nom-de-plum
of "The Scorpio Killer" in 1971's Dirty
Harry. The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) utilizes astrology during
the opening sequences of the kids in the van to foreshadow their
eventual fates. The concept of a "Black Zodiac" constructed
out of monstrous ghosts was utilized for the recent 2001 remake
of William Castle's 13 Ghosts. Perhaps
the most strident use of astrology in a feature film comes in
Ed Hunt's cult slasher Bloody
Birthday,
where the planets' alignments with the stars are responsible for
the carnage unleashed. |
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The
movie starts off in 1970 with the town doctor (a quickie cameo
for Jose Ferrer) rushing to the hospital where three expectant
mothers are about to give birth. The babies are all born at the
same time during an eclipse. The story picks back up in then-contemporary
1980, right before the children's' 10th birthday. The kids are:
creepy glasses-wearing Curtis (Billy Jacoby), blond follower Steven
(Andy Freeman) and evil mastermind Debbie (Elizabeth Hoy). When
some horny teens are killed with a jump rope and shovel, no one
suspects the little angels. Eventually the star of the film and
sexy good girl Joyce (fine honey Lori Lethin) just happens to
be doing a project about horoscopes and comes to the realization
(by doing their horoscope) that the eclipse blocked some planetary
influences on the children at the moment of birth, leaving them
without an important part of the human emotional make-up. Joyce's
brother Timmy (K.C. Martel) finds out about what the terror trio
are missing the hard way when, after witnessing but not fully
comprehending their murder of a sheriff (Debbie's dad), he is
locked into a refrigerator in a junkyard to die. There were other
clues that the kids were messed up had anybody chosen to look
their way. For instance, evil entrepreneur Debbie drills a hole
in her closet wall and charges local boys money for them to come
in and watch her older sister Beverly (naturally curvy Julie Brown
of Earth Girls Are Easy fame) strip
and dance in her bedroom. Curtis walks around regularly with a
replica police revolver so authentic that nobody notices when
he replaces it with the real thing and starts blowing away sexually
active college students in the backs of vans, or teachers who
assign too much homework. Joyce and Timmy figure out what is going
on in part (they know the two boys are evil, but are unaware of
Debbie's leadership of the dark cabal), yet they're discredited
due to events surrounding the trio's town birthday party in such
a way that nobody else would believe them over the kids. Can they
stop the killers when nobody in town would ever believe them? |
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Bloody
Birthday
is a fun slice of nostalgic and creepy slasher fare. None of the
kills are gruesome per se, but they are played out in a suspenseful
way with camera work and editing. The insightful horror fan may
be able to pick up on some subtle nods to horror films of the
past. For instance, there is a scene where Joyce is being pursued
by the kids attempting to drive a jump-started junk car over her,
and the driver is wearing a sack mask like Jason in Friday
the 13th Part 2, or the Moonlight Killer in The
Town That Dreaded Sundown, or even the title monster in
Dark Night of the Scarecrow. Variety
of death instruments also keeps up the interest (gun, rope strangulation,
arrow, baseball bat, car). Bloody Birthday
also boasts a winning performance by Lethin, who is a first-rate
scream queen and "Final Girl", and her brother Martell, who portray
an interesting and realistic family dynamic which helps glue together
the world of violent kids and unknowing adults who live in the
town of evil 10 year-old spawn. Other bits of interest include
the scene where Julie Brown reveals all to the delight of Debbie's
paying clientele, which is a fairly spectacular moment of celebrity
nudity/jiggle history. Aside from Jose Ferrer, there are a boatload
of celebrity cameos in the film, including Susan Strasberg (Psych-Out)
as a stern teacher who gets on the bad side of the pint-sized
kid monsters, Joe Penny (TV's Riptide) in a blink and you
miss it bit at the high school, and amazingly Michael (American
Ninja) Dudikoff kicks nobody's ass in a brief bit as Joyce's
college boyfriend. Finally, the secret weapon is the eternal cinematic
creepiness of kids with evil intent. It worked in Village
of the Damned, and it worked in Children
of the Corn, and it works in Bloody
Birthday as well, demons in kid's clothing killing with
impunity because little children are not to be feared… but they
should be. |
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| Severin's
new DVD of Bloody Birthday is up
to their usual high standard. The widescreen 1.66:1/16x9 print
looks crisp and clear with little graininess or faults. The lighting
scheme for the film is more akin to what was typical for television
filming in 1980, brightness without as many shadows as you'd expect,
but it works fine here. |
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There
are plenty of extras on this disc, starting off with the featurette
Don't Eat The Cake (10 min.), an interview with the older
yet still hot Lori Lethin as she discusses the film and her career.
A sense of humor and enjoyment for her film past is displayed
as she talks about pimples on the set of the TV's Charlie's
Angels, the lack of child safety on the Bloody
Birthday set, an unexpected recent encounter with Elizabeth
"Debbie" Hoy at a restaurant, and her atypical romantic taste
(saying she probably preferred a regular guy like director Ed
Hunt to typical hunky leading men like Joe Penny). Next up is
an audio-only interview with writer/director Ed Hunt. Edited over
a single image of Ed directing some film (not Bloody
Birthday, at least), this is a rambling yet fascinating
one-man performance where he discusses a number of his films,
mostly Starship Invasions (1977)
and his UFO documentary, and occasionally bits about Bloody
Birthday. Among the few revelations about the latter is
that Max "Amicus" Rosenberg came up with the initial idea. There
is much more detail about Starship Invasions
(begun before the Star Wars craze)
and UFOs Are Real (including how
UFO expert Stanton Friedman got involved, and about one interviewee
who actually got to their super-skeptical cameraman). Ed wanders
quite a bit back and forth through his professional timeline (when
he finishes talking about a film, he may or may not come back
to it with more details at some point later on), but regardless
it's a fascinating look at a cult filmmaker's career through his
eyes. The fine short piece A Short History of the Slasher Film
(15 min.) is included on this disc as well as Severin's recent
release of Nightmares,
and there are four trailers offered: The
Baby, Bloody
Moon, Nightmares, and Horror
Express. 7/20/11
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