Sledgehammer

My review was written in January 1986 after watching a World Video Pictures video cassette.

"Sledge Hammer" is a substandard example of the new breed of horror features shot with videotape cameras (such as "Copperhead" and "Blood Cult") rather than on film. It's strictly a home video shelf item.

Made in 1984, feature included explicit gore and some nudity but a very weak storyline. Cornball premise has a battered young boy killing his mom and her adulterous lover with a sledge hammer. Ten years later, he's grown up and killing young people staying for a weekend at the same house.

With the killer appearing and disappearing at will, plus a seance at the house, there is a vague element of the supernatural in this picture, but nothing of interest happens between murders. Chatty dialog seems improvised and overall production qualities seem closer to the videotaped porn genre than to a horror pic. Acting is perfunctory and pacing is quite sluggish.

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 is a homemade 80's slasher film that appears to have cost about 14 bucks to make and looks like it was shot on a VHS camcorder (I'm not kidding). It was shown at a theater in L.A. recently as part of a homemade horror video festival and I still can't get it out of my mind. The film begins with an abused child being locked in a closet while his mother has a drunken fling with a character referred to in the credits as the "Lover". Before the affair can commence a giant masked maniac armed with a sledgehammer beats them to a bloody pulp. A title card (old ass 80's camcorder text) tells us it's 10 years later and we are introduced to seven potential victims as they go for a weekend retreat in the home of the previous murders where they are systematically stalked and killed by the same sledge wielding madman. OK, I know it all sounds very derivative and there are much better, more professional cheap ass slashers out there, but this movie is "special" in a lot of ways. First off, the low production value and it's cheap, home video quality cinematography actually enhance the film a lot. That combined with a simple, yet effective, bass heavy synthesizer score, an amateur cast made up of muscle bound jocks and big hair bimbos, and a freakishly tall killer who wears a clear plastic mask and is genuinely creepy looking make this movie transcend into a weird kinda art piece. It's like if Pinter made a slasher movie at a friends house one weekend for beer money on his home video camera. There is also an unexplained paranormal bit where the killer can physically change back into the small child from the beginning so I assume the kid is the killer and he's a shape shifter. Huh!? This effect is handled with an old fashioned dissolve. There is a completely inappropriate food fight that is extended for so long it becomes almost disturbing on a sociological level. The killer is SO big he barely clears the hallway's ceiling as he chases a victim and he holds his sledgehammer in one hand the way most normal people hold a regular hammer. Freaky. This whole films visual style is unnerving and escalates it into something much more than what was probably intended. David Lynch meets The Slumber Party Massacre. If you can get a bootleg dub somewhere, get high and drunk with as many friends you can find and toss it on the old VCR. The 80's never seemed stranger.

Ted Prior was a Playgirl Playmate trying to get into acting, his brother David uhm, just owned a camera I guess, and so a fruitful collaboration started that has been going on for more than thirty years now. Their absolute masterpiece is probably 1987's "Deadly Prey", a complete and utter rip-off to "Rambo: First Blood" that is just irresistibly entertaining in all its wrongness. That one I can really recommend, but "Sledgehammer" is a whole other story. This thing is one of the most boring slasher films I have ever seen, it's clear the dynamic duo still had lots to learn when they made this. For example, David Prior hadn't figured out yet how to turn off the slo-mo effect on his camcorder. He uses slo-mo for the most random things. Some slo-mo in the grand finale, makes sense. Every single death scene in slow-motion, that's pushing it but fair enough. But why would you use it when the scene is just people walking around in a garden or sitting on a couch doing nothing? Is this young David Prior's creative force kicking in and not having a clue what it's doing? Not that the movie would be any good at a normal speed, but at least it would be lots shorter. Occasionally there is some almost-suspense (the clichéd slasher scene where one character tells the killer's legend isn't bad), the opening scene is also quite atmospheric, but as a whole "Sledgehammer" just doesn't bring much to the table to keep you entertained. It also doesn't help that you'll constantly have to yell "just get out of the house!" at the screen, my throat is still sore from yesterday. If this led the Priors on the road to "Deadly Prey" I appreciate it exists, but that's the nicest thing I can say about it.

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.