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Review by
Doug Red
Film:4
BD/DVD:8
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| NOTE:
Screenshots were taken from the DVD |
| The
Dorm That Dripped Blood
(AKA Death Dorm, AKA Pranks)
is a prime slice of '80s slasher fare from the time when the bloody
genre was at its peak of popularity. The old guard of supernatural
gothic horrors had long been staked in their coffins. Kids of
1981 wanted to see something they could believe as being in the
realm of possibility, something that tapped into universally shared
experiences in Reagan's America more than dusky crypts and ancient
evils —
namely faceless maniacs with sharp implements roaming about suburbs
and modern buildings picking off horny young adults one by one.
The Dorm That Dripped Blood crept
stealthily into theaters to give it the old college try. |
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The
plot: With the semester over, Joanne Murray (Laurie Lapinski)
is tasked with ensuring her old college dormitory is cleaned up.
Gathering together a small group of friends —
hunky Brian (David Snow), good girl Debbie (Daphne Zuniga), slightly
sour Patti (Pamela Holland) and practical joker Craig (Stephen
Sachs) —
they spend their holiday break cleaning up the building and selling
off what they can. Joanne may have a little thing for Brian after
her boyfriend Tim (Robert Frederick) leaves on a ski vacation,
and Debbie and Craig seem to be developing feelings, so it's a
love fest in the making. A small wrench is thrown into their plans,
however, when a stalk-'n-slash killer begins picking off the coed
cleanup crew one by one, but in a way that doesn't arouse suspicion
in the survivors. Who is the mysterious person they keep seeing
hanging around? What is the killer's ultimate goal? |
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Made
using student film equipment and meager economic resources, directors
Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter do their best to make a professional
length scary slasher film. What they made is a tale of two films,
where a mix of amateur hour theatrics combines with moments of
great invention for an occasionally satisfying whole. Some kills
are handled efficiently with believable gory sequencing, such
as the famous drill to the head killing, or a mutilated body uncovered
by a running victim. Other kills show the budget, such as death
by boiling where the body is just dropped into a vat of water
and cooked, or a car is used to run over a body where all that
is seen are the legs jerking. Some sequences are shot very effectively,
such as a chase through boiler room tunnels towards the end that
makes use of the claustrophobic space and natural lighting to
heighten the mood, while on the other hand there are ridiculously
shot moments like a brutal assault against a dinner table, or
relentless use of a first person stalker-cam style shots that
add no tension during the early parts of the film. A definite
plus is that the low budget meant that the clothing, hairstyles,
and locations were all authentic to that time which creates a
nice time capsule for real look at early eighties America and
what the world looked like outside of mainstream Hollywood films
of the era. |
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The best way to describe The Dorm That Dripped
Blood is to say that it's a weak film with a great twist
that saves it. For roughly the first two-thirds the film is vague
and tenuous. There is a pre-credit sequence death that seems to
exist purely for there to be a murder before the credits roll;
it never factors into the plot nor is it mentioned again. The
setup for clearing out the dorm is fairly vague conceptually,
with five college kids expected to clean out the entirety of a
multifloor building in a short amount of time for reasons that
aren't made fully clear. There is some kind of nut named John
Hemmit (played by Larry Fine-haired Woody Roll) who is either
a student who refused to leave or a homeless guy who lives on
the roof and/or in a dorm room. The kids are expected to sell
off furniture and objects to people and accept money, which is
where we meet Bobby Lee Tremble (Dennis Ely), a local guy whose
busty girlfriend provides the only brief eyeful of nudity in the
film. There are lots of stalker-cam moments, where the pulsating
score accompanies heavy breathing, shots of feet walking and shots
of long empty corridors. For a typical slasher of the period the
film doesn't really get up to full steam during these sequences.
However, in the last third, once everything about what is going
on is revealed, the film clicks into place. Laurie Lapinski's
Joanne finally gets to act and does a great job of showing a very
vulnerable person trying to get through a tough situation but
without the strength of character of, for instance, Halloween's
Laurie Strode. The seeming randomness of including the John Hemmit
and Bobby Lee Tremble characters is eventually paid off by having
very good reasons why they were around and acting the way they
are, and the eventual killer does a good job portraying true madness
in about as deep a way as Joe Spinell's Maniac.
The final third is a taut, well-directed segment that overcomes
the lackadaisical nature of the rest of the film to create frisson
worth remembering in the history of the slasher film. |
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| As
with its recent releases of Vampire
Circus and Embodiment
of Evil, Synapse Films unleashes The
Dorm That Dripped Blood in a two-disc combo set: one disc
is a 1080p Blu-ray presentation; the other an anamorphic 1:66:1
standard def version on DVD. The Blu-ray features a DTS-HD MA
2.0 lossless main audio soundtrack while the DVD's is a decent
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono. Both discs offer an isolated music option
plus the full slate of extras (see below). This is the Death
Dorm version (using that title card), the first and longest
cut of the film, seen here for the first time in its entirety. |
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Since this very low budget movie was originally shot 16mm and
then blown up to 35 (not to mention that much of the story takes
place at night and/or in darkened rooms and corridors), its expected
to look rather grainy and dingy — and it certainly does. Be that
as it may, this is the absolute best the film's ever going to
look on home video. |
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Extras include an interview with music composer
Christopher Young titled My First Score, where he talks
about how he got the job and approached scoring the film. (It
begins with the composer stating that he refuses to listen to
the score at this time, though he's willing to provide details
of how it was created and what the working on it was like.) My
First Slasher interviews make-up creator Matthew Mungle, who
talks about how his gore effects were originally cut down to the
nubs in theatrical prints — with visual examples to show what
was edited out — and how glad he is that the Synapse release finally
restores each effect to the prominence it deserved. There is also
an audio commentary by directors Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter.
However, the extras I enjoyed the most were the two theatrical
trailers. It was very interesting to see the two approaches used
to sell the different versions, even though they utilize most
of the same shots from the same sequences. The
Dorm That Dripped Blood has a heavy narration, a title
graphic that emphasized the university setting, and most of the
cuts were more straight from the film. It's not a bad trailer,
but it's not stylish either. With Pranks,
the template of the famous Friday
the 13th trailer is used, but instead of counting down
the deaths, they go with letters in the word "pranks" instead,
and utilize a faster cutting rhythm to give the film a more exciting
feel, and is the more effective trailer. There is also less emphasis
on the collegiate situation in Pranks,
where the killings could be happening in Anytown U.S.A. |
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Speaking of Pranks, the set comes
with reversible cover art for those who prefer that title. 6/07/11 |
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