SLASHERS
PLOT-Six American contestants compete in a popular Japanese game show in which they must survive being hunted by three deadly murderers.
VIOLENCE-Rivers of gore! Two heads are graphically chopped off, a woman is slowly (and explicitly) chainsawed in half, guts are ripped out, several people are stabbed and cut.
SEX/NUDITY-No sex. While there are at least three topless scenes featuring a couple of the lead actresses, only a few seconds of actual nudity are seen.
WHY I LIKED IT-This is simply one of the greatest independent films I have ever watched (and I have seen more than my share, trust me). Like Daniel Minahan's brilliant 2001 film SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS, Maurice Deveraux's SLASHERS plays like you are watching an episode of a reality TV show. The fact that it's shot on video only adds to the effect of watching it on your television at home. However, this is where the similarities end, because SLASHERS is a straight-up horror flick that is tailor made for fans who want something new and exciting. The gore is endless and cartoonish, the scares and suspense are well-executed, and the acting is first rate (particularly Sarah Crowder's performance as one of the lead characters). Sometimes it feels like you're in a haunted house attraction, only the threat of death is real. To top it all off, SLASHERS is filmed as one continuous shot (like Hitchcock's ROPE and Josh Becker's RUNNING TIME), using all manner of tricks to fool you into thinking you're watching real people die. Given the conditions Deveraux filmed under (and the extremely small budget), all this makes the film an even greater cinematic achievement. I was falling asleep when I put this movie on, but was wide awake for its entire 99-minute running time! I really got into it. A truly incredible and original film indeed.
DOWNSIDE-In low-budget films, there's always the risk of the camera lingering too long on a special effect that doesn't quite look realistic enough. That happens several times in SLASHERS, but given the way the scenes had to be shot, I imagine this was nearly unavoidable.
MEMORABLE SCENES-One girl is forced to watch a fellow contestant get cut in half by a chainsaw, and then has her shirt torn off before all the lights are cut out and she's left in the dark with the killers. Using an infa-red technique like in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (where the audience sees what the character cannot), the filmmakers create an even scarier scene than that. In an intense display of performance skill rarely seen in low-budget horror films, the actress screams and stumbles over the body of her fallen companion. Holy shit.
DVD NOTES-The DVD release has a lot of great extras, namely a feature-length director commentary track, deleted scenes, and an hour-long documentary about the making of the film. This is exactly the kind of DVD you should get if you're interested in making your own movie. Perfect.
(October 2002)