Sledgehammer

I'm going to be honest, this might be one of the worst slashers i've ever seen, but at least it's entertaining. Let's list off the bad things about this film: The acting, the ridiculous plot, the dialogue, the special effects, the camera work. So what is there to like about this film? Well, it's probably pretty fun to make fun of with your friends. 80s slashers are known for being cheesy but this truly goes above and beyond. The parts that are supposed to be funny aren't funny, the serious parts are laughable, the acting is cringey, the special effects are truly horrendous, and the editing. THE EDITING. There are far too many slow motion parts that i'm assuming are supposed to be emotional but they aren't. And they go on. And on... and on.... the slow motion segues literally last for 1-2 minutes at a time, it is nind boggling. In summary I would recommend watching this movie only if you are drunk at a party and want something truly awful to laugh at.

This movie is an anomaly to me. It has some good gore but by god are some scenes slow as all hell. There's one scene in which a character is opening a door and it takes well over 10 seconds to reach and turn the doorknob. It would be another fun and charming sov movie put out by Intervision if it weren't for the dragging of scenes and cringy overacting.

Sledgehammer (1983)

1/2 (out of 4)

A young boy is being abused by his mother so he brutally kills her and her boyfriend with (you guessed it) a sledgehammer. Ten years later a group of adults show up at the same house and soon start to get picked off.

Director David A. Prior's SLEDGEHAMMER deserves some credit for being the first shot on video slasher film but sadly there really isn't too many good things to say about it. I guess you can give the film credit for being the first of something but sadly the entire film is just one giant mess of a picture with very little going for it. As you'd expect, there are countless technical issues, the performances are horrid and there's one thing that makes the film almost painfully unbearable to sit through.

What is that? The film clocks in at 84-minutes and the reason it runs that long is that so much of it was shot in slow motion. This here is what really kills anything decent in the film because scenes just drag on for no reason what-so-ever. I mean, I understand using slow motion at times but when there's this much of it you just want to claw your eyes out. Even worse is that a lot of scenes drag on for no reason at all. For an example, the opening shot of the house. In most movies it would last a second or two but here it must drag on for thirty seconds and for no reason!

As I said, that there makes SLEDGEHAMMER impossible to enjoy and it's rather painful to have to sit through. I will say that the death scenes were creative enough for such a low-budget movie and there was one creative shot through the killer's eyes. Sadly that's about all this film has going for it but you have to give credit to Prior for making his own film and this helped give a rather long career off the ground.

The title appears, barely legible, in blocks, on screen for nineteen slow seconds, before being smashed with the title object. We, the audience, are then seemingly beaten over the head with some of the poorest picture quality imaginable, even for shot-on-video flick, during the opening title sequence, while an imitation of the Phantasm theme is played.

Obnoxious, amateur actors/ amateur porn stars gather in a farmhouse where, ten hyperbolic years earlier ( because nine years is never enough time, but eleven years is always too much time ) a double murder was committed. At one point, the filmmakers seemingly forgot they were doing a slasher film, and meander into a food fight, which lasts for nearly eight minutes, before setting up a seance, to contact the spirit of the killer from a decade earlier. " Some of you may have already heard what I'm about to tell you, " Mr. Polo Shirt informs us. We all have, because at this point, the filmmakers pad out the run time with a lengthy expositional flashback to the first scene from this very movie, in a Friday the 13th part 2- inspired bit, telling the audience what we already know. Two of these dip****s are later killed with a sledgehammer, which prompts another dip**** to ask​, " Any clues? " Perhaps the sledgehammer, and the dead bodies themselves, which they move, because they're all drunken morons? They remain in murder house overnight, basically waiting to be killed. The ghost/ killer/ whatever he is materialises/ crawls out of the woodwork, to off these nitwits one by one, and they kind of, sort of, fight for their lives.

The cast:

Chuck, seemingly cast for his muscular physique, and willingness to wear a polo shirt.

Joni: completely forgettable.

John: This guy just sucked.

Mary: kind of pretty, but has the same awful 80s perm as Joni.

Jimmy: looks likes he's killing time until the next Hall and Oates concert, or until he and Mary and Joni go have their hair permed at the same place.

Carol: probably the best of an admittedly lousy cast, but with the same perm hairdo as the rest of them.

Joey : I don't even remember this guy, but I'm sure he sucked.

Lover: sucked.

Mother: tolerable, but she and Jimmy and Mary and Joni look like they all have the same hairstylist, who only knows​how to do that same perm.

The boy: was a lame villain.

Killer: was he the killer? I thought it was the boy?

The driver: why was he even here?

But for all the grief and aggravation, I must admit I watched this film twice this month, before writing this review. It has some occasionally inspired camera-work, especially during the climax, among static shots of hallways. The music score is eerily effective, it reminded me a bit of German industrial band Einsturzende Neubauten, particularly their record, Zeichnungen des Patienten O. T. Plus, the added terror of a killer stalking his victims in their own home is a terrifying thought in and of itself. Gore fans should find enough in the ending to make it worthwhile, too.

I'm not saying this is * good *, but there are worse movies out there, like Blood Massacre, for example. Without the opening and closing credits, this is only 74 minutes long. Without the use of slow motion, it might only be about 20 minutes long.

For years I've tried to watch every 80s slasher movie and rank them in hopes of finding a hidden gem.... This was not one of them. I knew going into it that it was going to be bad but this was the second lowest one I've ranked out of 100s. The slow motion shots really really tested my patience. I think they were added into the movie just to stretch it as close as possible to 90 minutes. Movie consists of chases scenes up the same flight of stairs, down the same hallway, and into the same bedroom over and over and over.. outside of the one topless part, and a slow motion slap, there were no redeeming qualities.