Sunburst

I can now add this worthless thing to my worst 10 movies. It is about as thoughtless and ill conceived as anything put to celluloid. The plot and the motivations are bad enough. But there are so many distractions, I couldn't believe it. First, what's with the old gang. What about the young hothead boyfriend? Shouldn't he have shown up somewhere in all of this? Why even have him get into a confrontation with the lead. Then there's the guy they're going to see. It's Freddy Krueger, playing a nice guy who spouts philosophy. He's some skinny dork who went to the woods. What about the bad guys. How do you know, "We'll never see them again"? Shouldn't someone report the rape and get after those guys. After being accosted by the two, shouldn't someone's guard have been up a bit, just a little bit? How can one analyze something so idiotic? Suffice it to say, this isn't even campy funny. I think a good conclusion would have been an enormous meteor landing on the entire bunch. Oh. I forgot Rudy Valee. What the hell is he doing there?

After dumping her jerk of a boyfriend, beautiful student Jenny (Kathrine Baumann) and her old friend Robert (Peter Hooten) decide to pay a visit to pal Michael (Robert Englund), who has 'dropped out' to live in a remote cabin in the mountains. The trip sees Jenny and Robert taking their relationship beyond being just good friends; unfortunately, the couple run into a pair of hillbilly rapists - Levon (James Keach) and Danker (David Pritchard) - who spoil the mood by beating Robert unconscious and attacking Jenny.

Following Deliverance and The Last House on the Left (but predating I Spit on Your Grave by three years), I expected Sunburst (AKA Slashed Dreams) to be a gritty backwoods rape/revenge movie, with Robert, Michael and Jenny using extreme violence to settle the score with Levon and Danker. But while Robert does attack the rapists in a fit of rage, the rednecks escape retribution, scurrying off into the woods before any real harm is done to them. Instead of 'an eye for an eye', the film's message appears to be 'don't dwell on the bad things in life', Jenny's eventual acceptance/dismissal of what has happened allowing her to move on.

It's well past the halfway mark before the hillbillies show up, with way too much time wasted on Jenny and Robert driving to the mountains and then hiking through the woods, the most exciting moment being when a bear eats their food. When the young couple decide to go skinny dipping, we get some welcome nudity from Baumann, but up to that point, the film is a real test of one's patience. The arrival of Danker and Levon adds a little tension, but the rape scene, when it happens, is fumbled by director James Polakof, who seems reluctant to disturb or offend the viewer, and everything that follows feels even more lacklustre. Englund - probably the main reason people will seek this film out these days - has very little screen-time and his character is a total wet blanket.

But the worst thing about the film isn't the crap ending or the dreadful pacing, but the soundtrack - a series of awful new-age folk songs by some flower child who mistakenly thinks that she is Joan Baez.

3/10.

N. B. The film's alternative title - Slashed Dreams - has got to be a desperate attempt to cash in on Englund's fame as Freddy Krueger.

Probably the only reason this amateur hour snoozefest isn't on the IMDb Bottom 100 list is that almost no one has seen it. If they had, it would have easily surpassed "Manos: The Hands of Fate" and "Baby Geniuses 2" as the most excruciating home movie ever. In fact, "Manos" now looks like a profound work of art in comparison, and perhaps deserves a reevaluation.

There's almost no way to describe the incredible badness of "Slashed Dreams"/"Sunburst." It goes way beyond the Mystery Science Theater 3000 level... and of course never comes close to hitting that so-bad-it's-funny, level -- just goes on and on in an early '70s, 16mm Ektachrome so-bad-it's-painful mode. Like a couple of high school kids went out in the woods with a camera. But a couple of high school kids with prefrontal lobotomies. We're taking no story here. No pace. No connection to reality and no idea how a film is actually made... however they did manage to obey every single Stupid Rule of horror films ever invented: kids go into woods, kids are threatened by maniacs, kids don't even CONSIDER leaving woods -- check. Girl is raped by maniacs, guy does absolutely nothing, and then they STILL don't even consider leaving woods -- check.

And in the middle of this lobotomized "Deliverance"/"Easy Rider"/"Last House on the Left" hybrid with a "Friday the 13th" poster, who shows up but of course, Rudy Vallee. Yes folks, Rudy Vallee. Just made sense I guess for the legendary 1920s jazz crooner to be included in a home movie thriller about a woman being raped by inbred hillbillies. All the sense in the world.

But far worse than Anything Else is the screeching, shrew-like banshee wail of some Joan Baez wannabe plastered over the home movie footage every ten minutes or so in order to convey the Tragic and Sensitive Nature of this very Profound and Serious Film about Rape.

Nurse, please hand me the leucotome. And welcome to hell.

this is one of the darkest films i've ever seen. certainly, it's one of the most politically incorrect. it may have been packaged as a sex and violence exploitation thriller, but it could be thought of as more along the lines of an existential art film. it really goes beyond the need for a numerical rating; it practically inhabits a universe unto itself. yet at the same time it in some ways is VERY MUCH of its time. it's a post-"easy rider," post-youth culture seventies burnout epic. "good" doesn't triumph over "evil." in fact, the fact calls into question the validity of such categories. a woman is raped and learns to "accept" her ordeal as a part of life. the rapists are never punished and the crime never even appears to have been reported. as far as i am concerned, the film goes a BIT too far. it's existential acceptance of human suffering ends up as a kind of complacency. authentic existentialists generally see human suffering as largely meaningless and hence unjustified. yet director polakof seems to ask us to view suffering as justifiable, as part of "the plan," as part of "fate." nonetheless, he takes the viewer on a "realistic" journey instead of giving us fairy tales and revenge fantasies. as a result, "slashed dreams" stands apart from both common exploitation fodder and whatever kind of product the "mainstream" motion picture industry is putting out these days.

Slashed Dreams (1975)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

The producer's tried to sell this off to the horror crowd in the Last House on the Left vein but it's more of a mix between Love Story and Deliverance. A guy and girl go into the woods of Northern California to look for a friend who has moved there. That night, while in the cabin, two rednecks beat the hell out of the guy and rape the girl. Will everything be okay? This is one of those movies that keep you entertained because you expect something to happen but when it never does you hit yourself for staying with the movie. Robert England plays the friend living in the woods.