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[Blu-ray Review] ‘Scalps’ – The Lowest Grade of Slasher Schlock
If you’re a horror fan that grew up during the VHS age of home video you likely have fond memories of heading to your local video store on a Friday night and perusing the horror section trying to find the perfect film. More often than not your choice would come down to title and artwork. Maybe you’d flip to the back of the box and take a quick glance at the synopsis, but it rarely came to that. You’d be pulled in by the artwork and that would lead to your decision. The majority of the time the film would fail to live up the artwork, but that’s just the way it was.
In the DVD and Blu-ray age we haven’t ran into this problem nearly as much for a number of reasons. For starters it’s a lot easier these days to know about films before finding them on the shelves of your local video store (or Netflix or Amazon or wherever you get your movies from these days). In addition to that, home video releases just don’t have the same type of artwork they used to have in the VHS days. More often than not movies released have a very bland cover. The exception are the releases we get from Scream Factory, Arrow Video, 88 Films, Vinegar Syndrome and so on. The artwork on the releases from these little genre companies do their best to harken back to the 80’s.
Why am I talking about all this now? Because I was fooled, friends! 88 Films recently released Scalps on Blu-ray (also available in the US as an Amazon exclusive from Retromedia Entertainment) and the artwork is amazing. Seriously, it’s fantastic, check it out:
That’s pretty great artwork, right? That catches your eye. Plus it’s part of the Slasher Collection from 88 Films and I love their Slasher Collection. I was easily sold on watching this and was in fact very excited to do so. Now this is a Fred Olen Ray movie and I do enjoy the work of Fred Olen Ray, but my expectations should have been in check. Instead I was a fool and dove into this one head first.
In this “slasher” a group of college archeology students head to the California desert to do some digging. They’re warned that they must be careful when choosing where to dig, but they don’t pay attention because they’re college kids! They end up digging around in a Native American burial ground in search for artifacts and well this is bad. They release the curse of Black Claw, an evil spirit that possesses each student one at a time and causes them to slaughter one another.
This idea of this movie is fantastic! I would love a movie that ran with this idea and did it well. Scalps is not that movie. Not even close. Scalps is a bad, bad, bad movie. Even by Fred Olen Ray standards. It’s 82 minutes and it drags by! This movie feels like it’s two and a half hours long. Sure, the death count is pretty high, but these aren’t great deaths. Not only do the deaths fail to be anything special, the effects don’t look good and the acting is complete rubbish.
Man, Scalps is a bummer. I wanted this to be awesome, but it just isn’t. There are two things I like in this movie – the music is kind of ok and there’s a nice cameo from Forrest J Ackerman. Other than that this is garbage. I’m sure there are some 80’s slasher aficionados that will likely find some joy and charm in this, but not me. I couldn’t do it.
Actually, there is a third thing I like. It’s the lion-mask-thing pictured above. That looks pretty cool. Why didn’t they do more with that? I would have loved to see more of that thing.
As far as the Blu-ray goes, here’s the bonus content that is included:
SPECIAL FEATURES
- 2K Scan from the Original Negative with Censored Scenes Restored via Tape Sources
- Brand New Audio Commentary track with Director Fred Olen Ray
- Original 35mm Theatrical Trailer
- “Remembering Scalps” New 22 Minute Retrospective featurette with Richard Hench, Frank McDonald, Chris Olen Ray and Fred Olen Ray.
- Justin Kerswell on Scalps: A Slasher Experts View
- 88 Films Trailer Reel
- Reversible Sleeve featuring original poster artwork
Let’s start with that 2k scan. Adding in the censored scenes using tape sources is a nice touch. I’m all for getting the uncut version so that’s a major plus. As for the quality of the transfer its a bit rough and certainly not what you expect from a Blu-ray. I don’t think that’s any fault of 88 Films, however. If I had to guess the remaining elements for Scalps were not great and we got the best we could ever hope for. So while this isn’t a stellar looking release that will blow you away, I do think this is the best version of this film we’re likely to ever see.
The retrospective and experts view from Justin Keraswell are both very nice. They make a rather dull movie a bit more interesting. The commentary from Ray I have not listened to yet but just to know it’s there is nice. I will eventually listen to it and maybe Ray will be able to salvage Scalps in some way.
So that’s Scalps, the Blu-ray that seduced me with art just like many VHS did during my childhood. I don’t think this is a good movie, in fact I think it’s quite bad, but I’m sure there are many out there that have a soft spot for this piece of schlock. Despite the less than great picture, the Blu-ray is solid. If you’re a fan of the film this is definitely the way to go. Or if you just have to continue your 88 Films Slasher Collection, then you kind of have no choice but to get this.
Scalps is now available on Blu-ray from 88 Films.
Night School, director Ken Hughes and writer Ruth Avergon‘s tale of a headhunting slasher on the streets of Boston, arrived in the early Golden Age of the slasher film and never quite broke through the endurance test that other films in the subgenre, like Friday the 13th, managed to pass with flying colors. Blame it on a more cerebral tone, a crowded market, whatever you like, but saying it’s a shame that the film didn’t break through doesn’t begin to cover it.
Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere.
So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).
Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner.
I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve.
But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.
It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.
Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.
In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking.
That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.
Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
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