Jogos Mortais

A lousy slasher, but there are a few endearing characters and it works better as a made for TV mystery type thing. There's not a lot of blood or gore or scary sequences, but it's ok if you want something cozier. Unfortunately, it's hard to see much of anything due to the muddy, dark VHS transfer.

My review was written in September 1983 after watching the movie on Cinemax.

Filmed with the title"Who Fell Asleep?" during the horror production boom at the end of 1979, "Deadly Games" is an unsuccessful thriller marginally released last year and currently getting pay tv exposure and available on video cassette. Filmmaker Scott Mansfield has piloted a good cast in okay performances, but failed to provide the requisite thrills.

Routine story, frequently undercut by knowing horror buff references, has Keegan (Jo Ann Harris), a writer for a music magazine, returning to her sleepy hometown where a rash of murders (detailed in usual stalk-and-slash, heavy breathing on the soundtrack fashion) has broken out. Though laid-back cop on the case Roger Lane (Sam Groom) doesn't acknowledge it, the chief suspect is his scarred, Vietnam Wa pal Billy Owens (Steve Railsback), whom the camera virtually indicts in the opening reels.

While Keegan is meeting her mom (June Lockhart in a very small role) and old chums, picture drifts into old-fashioned romantic idylls, touch football games and other diversions, dissipating the atmosphere of danger.

Harris gives a fun, personable performance as the independent heroine who can take care of herself, but the rest of the cast is relegated to stock roles. Fil's release title refers to a horror movie board game Groom and Railsback play parallel to the real-life killings. Railsback works as a projectionist in a horror movie theatre (star trio watch the 1932 "The Monster Walks" after-hours there one night), setting up many genre notations in the script.

Ultimately, the fairly-predictable killer turns out to be merely seeking some excitement in a too-dull community, leading to a wholly unsatisfying, convenient freeze-frame ending. Tech credits are okay.

While not a bad movie, the only memorable parts were the deaths and the ending. The bright spot, however, was Colleen Camp's performance. While not the best ever, it was nice to see that she was acting as well as she was. Unfortunately, the movie was confusing and a lot of it made no sense for a while and even until the end... that's what I get for falling asleep through it, huh? It was pretty boring...

"Deadly Games" a.k.a Who Fell Asleep, which to be honest I did as it just dragged mostly for me. It started off well with a young woman getting disturbing phone calls and then getting attacked by a man in a ski mask, which was quite tense and exciting, but the outcome was rather tame.

The aspect that I did like about it was the characters, especially the core female cast which I did find rather interesting and blossoming romance between the female lead and the cop, which was actually kind of sweet and they had decent chemistry together. But after a while it did get rather tedious, like for a start none of the other murders had any real spark or tension to them. But the lead actress Jo Ann Harris was rather likable as the female lead, and quite refreshing to have someone real and plucky in the role.

It's just everything else in this movie just lacks, for a start the killer was just too easy to figure out and when it came down to the final scenes, it was just well dull and total lack of proper motive, just made everything that came before it rather disappointing.

All in all there are glimmers here and there of a decent slasher movie, but sadly not enough of anything special with a mystery element that just doesn't work, despite good performances, this movie was just way too boring to keep me that interested.

I somehow thought this movie would turn out to be an undiscovered treasure, but no such luck! Visually murky and poorly plotted, this is basically an oh-so-familiar retread of "Halloween", though the director shows some talent and tries to surpass the limitations of the script. The lousy ending does not help. (*1/2)