ABOUT THE AUTHOR: I met Bryan Hiltner on Facebook as he was posting giallo reviews. I liked his writing and am excited to have him on the site.
This year I had a blast taking part in Giallo Gianuary; thanks to the infinite understanding of my family, I managed to watch 44 gialli in the month. So I figured I’d go for another theme in February on a much smaller scale: three slashers and one arthouse fav, all of them Valentine-related.
On the 14th I fired up the Aughts slasher Valentine for the first time. This was one I’d been avoiding since its release, as neither the neu metal trappings of the era nor the negative reviews had me optimistic. So it was a shock to discover Valentine is a fantastic little slasher, which is no doubt a divisive take for genre fans. Rumor has it more slicing and dicing occurred in the cutting room than in the actual film in order to appease the MPAA… but come on, what’s not to love here?
A classic slasher needs likable characters and memorable kills, and while the kills may be abbreviated and altered to sustain that crucial ‘R’ rating, the gore is still plentiful and rendered uniquely. We’ve got death by knife, by bow and arrow, by electrocution and drill, not to mention the consumption of maggoty chocolates. The vapid and somewhat abrasive characters would seem to thwart Valentine’s status as a genre standout, but the performances themselves are strong, and I don’t need to like the characters as long as they’re interesting or delightfully despicable.
Most classic slashers have a memorable bitchy character; Valentine has an entire cast of them, and their specific brands of bitchiness are varied and tied to the trauma they inflicted on our tortured killer in the past. Our final girl does manage to sustain a thin layer of empathy, which allows the audience to care for her enough for the final stalking scenes to provide the necessary drama. And while there’s a final twist that anyone could see coming, the way director Jamie Blanks makes it explicit in that final shot and then cuts to black allows for some haunting ambiguity to linger. So much better than I assumed it would be, Valentine was a delightful surprise.
Next on the agenda was the movie most of you watch every year (and you’re all fools, but more on that in the next section): that 1981 classic My Bloody Valentine. I’ve seen it twice now, and while it’s certainly a top-tier holiday slasher, I wouldn’t elevate it to the lofty status it currently boasts among horror aficionados. This movie does so much right; in particular, the creepy tale of Harry Warden’s murders and how they linger over the little mining community of Valentine Bluffs really infuse the plot with a sense of inevitable doom.
Those hearts delivered to the police via candy boxes are creepy, to be sure. And I always dig it when the killer’s getup not only looks scary, but is composed of clothing articles that most of the characters have access to, allowing for maximum paranoia and red herrings galore. Unfortunately the who-dunnit aspect of My Bloody Valentine is not its strong suit; a key character keeps going missing whenever the killer miner pops up, and other characters that should be suspects are stripped of their red herring status when they are present as a murder can be heard offscreen.
Obviously My Bloody Valentine is a far better slasher film than Valentine … but with the former I went in with high expectations, and the latter I expected to be shitty beyond redemption. So against all odds I had more fun with the Jamie Blanks Aughts slasher than with the one from The Year of Our Slasher Lord, 1981.
And that brings me to the CITIZEN KANE of Playboy Playmate-starring hospital slashers, Hospital Massacre. Yes, I know the accepted title is X-Ray, but our time on this planet is limited; why waste time not using fun titles? Twitch of the Death Nerve is, objectively, a far more awesome title than Bay of Blood… so moving forward, can we all just all agree to call this bizarre Barbi Benton vehicle Hospital Massacre? This one I’ve seen at least a half-dozen times now, and the entertainment value just flourishes with each viewing. I know, I know: My Bloody Valentine is technically a better film, no question about it. But Hospital Massacre is like stepping into a Dali painting, or a horny David Lynch nightmare. There is no logic; there is only Vibe.
Barbi Benton plays Susan, who hurt a smitten young boy’s feelings a long time ago. She shows up at the hospital for a routine exam… but nothing is routine in this Kafka-esque facility. The 9th level of the hospital, where the killer runs rampant, is undergoing a fumigation process that has transformed the floor into a shadowy fog-shrouded netherworld. All the bad dialogue and strange performances that usually prevent immersion into a film actually strengthen Hospital Massacre’s feverish feel. Incompetence becomes intentionality; laziness becomes Lynchian. Most surreal of all might be that the opening scene reveals the first name of the killer… but when we meet a character at the hospital with that same name, the movie acts like this is nothing to keep tabs on.
And Hospital Massacre takes that readily-available-killer-costume concept up a notch; it’s just a doctor’s scrubs and surgical mask that anyone could throw on. Long story short: there’s so much comedy here, the majority of it unintentional no doubt, but I always find myself laughing with Hospital Massacre rather than at it. It’s one of my favorite slasher films, my go-to Valentine viewing… and I’m quite comfortable standing alone on this island, waving my Freak Flag for this trashy treat.
Last on the docket was a prestigious flick I had been curious about for years: Peter Weir’s 1975 arthouse mystery Picnic at Hanging Rock. One can argue this dreamy mystery is slasher-adjacent, and the bare bones of the plot support this assertion. Girls from an Australian private school go for a picnic at an isolated location on Valentine’s Day, and a few of them disappear.
This movie takes the concept Antonioni explored in L’Avventura and tethers it to more traditional narrative filmmaking… so if you love the mystery aspects of the Antonioni film but are frustrated by its refusal to approach anything resembling a resolution, Picnic at Hanging Rock might be the superior option for you. As an Antonioni fanboy, I see things a bit differently; Weir’s movie is a bit less bold than Antonioni’s film, but it’s still striking for its supernatural aura and for how the mystery deepens as the plot progresses. By the end of the film we still don’t know exactly what happened to the girls, but we have some unnerving suspicions, whereas with L’Avventura we can’t be sure a crime ever took place to begin with.
I really dug Picnic at Hanging Rock, love the hypnotic visuals and mesmerizing score, and found the blend of beautiful innocence and hints of sexual depravity to be riveting. Has anyone ever followed up Hospital Massacre with a movie like this? Well, now someone has.
A neu-metal murder spree populated with vapid hotties, a gas mask-wearing psycho lurking in underground tunnels, a stay at the trippiest hospital in horror history, and some high-class Aussies dropping off the face of the earth. They don’t all flow together seamlessly, but hey, neither do Susan’s intestines in those bizarre x-rays that her quack doctors keep obsessing over in Hospital Massacre. If these four movies were chocolates in a heart-shaped candy box, and if this review leaves you craving a taste, don’t blame me if you take a bite and feel the squish of writhing maggots. All I can tell you is I only tasted the sugar.
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