Hospital Massacre is a strange mix of slasher and humor that can only happen when you give a camera to a clueless film crew that has no vision nor the basic knowledge how to shoot a movie.
Kategoria: 1981
#192 So Fine (1981)
Starts a little slow, gets disoriented fast, wonders around without direction for an hour and desperately tries to fill the remaining 30 minutes with whatever nonsense.
#173 All the Marbles (1981)
All the Marbles tries to sell us choreographed show wrestling as a real sport, and the included far too lengthy matches ruin what could’ve been a decent road movie.
#168 Dorothy Stratten trilogy: Death of a Centerfold (1981)
Dorothy Stratten was a waitress from a small town seduced by a small time hustler called Paul Snider who soon after starting dating started booking her some petty appearance deals. Snider then persuaded Dorothy to pose in nude photos and she was picked up by Playboy to be their centerfold and to his shock, the possessive and manipulative Snider soon found Dorothy, his sure meal ticket to the stars, drifting away from his clutches.
When the separation was finally confirmed, Snider invited Stratten to his home, shot her and then committed a suicide; she was only twenty at the time.
A rising star, Stratten’s death was a huge news story in the early 80s and spawned two movies depicting the tragedy.
First one of these is Death of a Centerfold, a TV-movie rushed out and released the same year. The production quality is fine for a TV-movie, but the story takes far too many liberties with the subject, changing names of the people involved and the actual events that took place. Both lead roles are strong, fine actors, but clearly miscasts for the movie.
It’s not entirely a lemon, but the movie could’ve been a lot better had they waited some more and done their home work on the subject before commencing filming.
A soap-opera take on the life of Dorothy Stratten pays no homage to the people involved and was clearly rushed out to cash quickly on the tragedy
#161 The Burning (1981)
A clone of the slasher genre classic Friday the 13th this blatant would usually be sacrilegious – but luckily The Burning manages to improve on its role model in almost every aspect.
80s-o-meter: 61%
Total: 68%
#131 Sharky’s Machine (1981)
By far one of the most uneven movies I’ve ever seen, Sharky’s Machine is a sharp and stylish cop movie at one moment and horrible, unwatchable, incoherent mess the next.
80s-o-meter: 55%
Total: 59%
#110 My Bloody Valentine (1981)
There’s no actual plot to speak of, but My Bloody Valentine still stands well above average slashers of the time.
Be sure to check out the uncut Bluray version for some gruesome / hilarious killing scenes never seen before.
80s-o-meter: 72%
Total: 81%
#96 An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Apart from the some of the imaginative makeups, An American Werewolf in London feels extremely outdated and dull and does not live up to anywhere near the hype.
80s-o-meter: 46%
Total: 29%
#58 Southern Comfort (1981)
The southern swampy action movie gets a few extra points for its unique setting and fascinating rough-edged characters, but story wise there really isn’t that much here.
80s-o-meter: 25%
Total: 59%
#56 Inseminoid aka Horror Planet (1981)
As this blog is generally about american movies of the eighties, I usually steer away from british and australian films – they sometimes get some things right mimicking the Hollywood style, but usually lack that certain magic. But as rules are meant to be broken, and being the nice guy that I am, I sometimes give some titles that sound or look interesting enough a benefit of a doubt. Plus, I’m a sucker for almost all the eighties scifi!
Inseminoid is a british scifi horror movie taking place in a mining planet far away in the space. Except that it don’t feel like it. It feels like it’s shot in a mine and a studio right here on earth and never manages to establish that feeling of an exotic planet.
The plot heavily rips off Alien that came our only two years before, taking the action from a space ship to a planet. The crew members find some alien crystals, one of the women gets raped by a creature, turns into a crazed killer and from thereon it goes pretty much like you’d except with no plot twists worth mentioning.
Everything in the movie has that low production value feel to it, computers look like painted cardboard boxes, film crew’s shadow can be accidentally seen in various scenes and the dialogue and acting is horrid. The film hasn’t really hasn’t aged well at all, and looks much more outdated than the older Alien movie. The overall look and feel has that quality to it that if the dialogue was in some slavic language, this one would easily pass as some sort of eastern Europe scifi knock-off.
On top of it all, many scenes are very needlessly prolonged, in an attempt to reach that needed hour and 30 minutes runtime.
It does have some strange charm to it, but it’s finally ruined by the fact that it’s just plain boring to watch. And even though the kitsch factor is high here, I can’t see myself recommending this movie to anyone.
80s-o-meter: 54%
Total: 23%
#52 The Prowler (1981)
Joseph Zito’s early 80s slasher succeeds to be one of the better slashers thanks to the solid execution, despite all the cliches of the genre.
80s-o-meter: 65%
Total: 65%
#45 Absence of Malice (1981)
Absence of Malice is a term thrown around in the journalistic world, meaning the journalists’ unaccountability for the harm done for an individual when reporting is done accurately to the best knowledge at the time and without bad intent – even if further evidence will proof that person innocent.
The story of press finding out a police investigation concerning a person of interest, which it then prints out causing a lot of collateral damage to an entrepreneur who then fights back to clear his name, is an unique and interesting one. As the network and news site competition has gotten a heck of a lot more fierce the issue is probably even more topical today than it was back in 1981.
The execution of the concept is professional with Sydney Pollack’s solid – albeit without surprises – directorial work. I’ve never been a fan of Sally Field’s timid screen presence, but her performance here is acceptable as a careerist reporter struggling to keep in balance with her identity as an objective journalist. The real treat here is Paul Newman whose screen presence is unparalleled, and who manages to steal every scene he stars in even with a very subtle performance seen here.
Lastly, Wilford Brimley makes one of his most prolific appearances as the Attorney General who comes to set the record straight in his own quirky fashion in maybe the most memorable scene of the movie.
80s-o-meter: 73%
Total: 72%
#38 Eye of the Needle (1981)
Above average thriller taking place during WW2 with a german spy knocking about, performing espionage and seducing young women.
80s-o-meter: 58%
Total: 0%
#32 All Night Long (1981)
George Dupler (Gene Hackman) is an unlikeable middle-aged man who has just gotten an inexplicable (well, atleast this movie doesn’t bother to tell you the reason) fit of rage at work place and thus demoted to a shop’s night manager. He soon finds out his ignorant knobhead of a son is dating his family friend’s wife Cheryl (Barbra Streisand) and it doesn’t take too long for this vixen to get his hands on George as well.
All Night Long goes fast from bad to worse with some related and some unrelated fill in scenes in between to a point where George has not only left his wife, is living in a dump, and being chased by the ex husband and hated by his son.
Surely this sounds like the situation is getting way too bad to resolve?
Well, fear not! In a true 70s movie style it all comes together magically in the last five minutes in an idiotic twist that’s only barely more reasonable than waking up and realising it was all just a dream.
80s-o-meter: 45%
Total: 17%
#22 The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981)
Joel Schumachers theatrical debut combines a moronic idea with a lousy script and uninspired execution and makes one wonder how this one ever got green light.
80s-o-meter: 55%
Total: 19%
#19 Continental Divide (1981)
When an investigating journalist Ernie Souchak (John Belushi) gets beaten up and is sent to hospital for writing a too revealing story about a corrupted councilman, he is sent away from the city to Rocky mountains to do a story of a Dr. Nell Porter (Blair Brown), an eagle researcher living in solitude. While back in the city Souchak is a tough cookie and somewhat a celebrity, in the wilderness he is completely unknown, useless and inept, but tries to cling onto every bit of masculinity he still has left, often with a comical outcome.
Continental Divide is a movie that grows on you. All of a sudden you find yourself sympathizing the grumpy Souchak, and being the fly on the wall sharing the small cabin up in the mountains with the two and watching their worlds collide. The dialogue is witty and Belushi delivers every line like a pro that he is.
While I didn’t pick up this movie for John Belushi, and the male lead on this one could’ve been anyone as far as I was concerned, after seeing the movie he obviously was the right choice for the role for this (romantic) comedy.
There was much more to John Belushi than a SNL comedian or a Blues Brother. Too bad we didn’t get to see more of him.
80s-o-meter: 70%
Total: 81%