SLASH DANCE

You’re probably not going to believe this, but SLASH DANCE is a terrible movie. It opens like a direct-to-video BLOOD AND BLACK LACE knock-off, all mannequins, ornate bric-a-brac and gelled lighting. We’re inside some rundown arts theater. Our only companion is a ditzy, big haired blonde here to audition for some kind of dance performance. As no one seems to be around, the blonde puts on her headphones, dancing alone on stage. Then suddenly, GASP! SHOCK!, a dark figure emerges from the shadows. A short POV stalking sequence ends with the blonde lying dead on the floor, her throat slashed with a hand saw.

We cut to a pretty redhead sunbathing on the beach. Her lounging is interrupted by a very gay man flashing his penis. After insulting the flasher enough to chase him off, the redhead packs up her things and leaves. We see her again later, this time approaching two beefy women about scoring some illegal steroids. They’re willing to sell if she’s willing to buy. Unfortunately for our would-be drug dealers, this redhead isn’t just a pretty face. She’s a cop. A cartoonish brawl ensues.

Later, our red haired copper, Tori, has a meeting with her politically ambitious asshole of a boss, Edison (played by B-movie regular John Henry Richardson). This is where we learn that the world at large only thinks of Tori as a life support system for a pair of tits. Never mind the fact that Tori once went undercover, busting a psychopathic, homicidal nudie photographer before he could kill even more women. A few of her nudes leaked out to the world, causing Edison some undue stress, killing her reputation in the process. “Her tits are too nice to be a cop”, Edison says after Tori storms out of his office.

Thankfully, Tori has a chance to prove herself once again. Another aspiring dancer has gone missing. Tori and her partner devise a covert operation that involves our intrepid ginger posing as a would-be performer. But will she be able to stop the mad slasher before he kills yet another girl?

The better question would be, did writer/director James Shyman have any interest whatsoever in making a slasher film? Because SLASH DANCE isn’t much of a slasher movie at all. It has the requisite elements, the pretty women, the masked killer, and a handful of red herrings that include a desperate-for-cash owner, his mentally challenged (and possibly insane) little brother, a flirtatious and demanding director, and the penis flashing pervert who just so happens to work at the theater. It’s all there. But Shyman decides that instead of diving down the slasher hole, he’s going to make an attempt at a character drama.

Tori has had a shit childhood. Her sister overdosed at a party. Her mother committed suicide shortly after. Tori became a cop to right the wrongs of the world and hopefully one day find the man responsible for supplying her sister with the drugs that took her life. At various points in the film, we hear voice over narration relaying all these troubling events. The film has us believe that the killings will somehow be connected to Tori’s past trauma and that by solving the mystery, she will achieve some kind of closure.
But nope. The killings have absolutely nothing to do with Tori. They don’t even have much to do with anyone else in the film. The killer has their own past trauma, one that we only learn about when the murderer suddenly makes his appearance with about six minutes left to go in the film. That's right, Tori doesn’t even solve the mystery. The killer just shows up, takes off their mask and vomits exposition for two solid minutes.

And that’s probably the single biggest issue I have with the movie. Tori does literally fuck all in terms of solid investigation. Shyman decides to play a little game of wish fulfillment with his leading lady. She’s looked down upon at work, treated like a slut or a sex object by virtually every man she has contact with. But with the exception of the nut job little brother, the men at the dance company treat her rather well. She even gets along with her fellow dancers. A romance brews between Tori and Rupert, the schlubby director. He thinks she’s lovely and talented. He wants to take her to New York. I imagine for someone as put upon as Tori, the positive attention must feel wonderful.

But this is a goddamn slasher film, not a corny romance about people finding love in a shoddy dance company. So why do we spend more time watching five women practice the same five dance steps over and over, and so little time watching people die in horrible ways? What’s the point of having an undercover cop if they’re not going to do any real police work? Shyman could have just written a movie about an aspiring dancer who just so happens to stumble into a dangerous situation. There wouldn’t have been so much wasted time.

SLASH DANCE is a film with a major identity crisis. It has several violent moments, including a suicide. It contains a whiff of the revenge flick. It has a premise that all but guarantees sexploitation thrills. And yet the violence is infrequent and tame, the revenge aspects are just left hanging without resolution, and the bevy of dancing beauties never once disrobe or show more than an ankle or an exposed shoulder. But they sure do talk a lot about boyfriends and love affairs and money woes and unfulfilled dreams and issues at work. And that’s a big, big problem.

The title SLASH DANCE promises cheese and giggles. A slasher film promises scares and flesh wounds. This film sorely lacks all of those things. It’s like sitting on the couch with your mom as she watches some Lifetime drivel, eagerly flipping over to the horror flick playing on another channel every time she leaves the room. You only get a few moments before you have to click back to the lame, uninteresting melodrama. It’s a frustrating, tiring experience.

BERSERKER

Six substitute teachers college students head off into the woods for a weekend of fun at a rickety, unfurnished shack cozy, romantic getaway spot. As they sit around a campfire, one of the group tells the others all about the “berserkers”, Viking barbarians decked out in masks made from bear snouts. They were the meanest of the mean, barely sane if at all, giant beasts of men who would spill gallons of blood on the battlefields. This turns out to be a remarkably apt tale to tell because there just so happens to be a berserker roaming the woods. He’s already claimed two victims, a kind, elderly couple celebrating their anniversary. Or maybe it was just a large bear that tore poor old Homer and Edna to pieces. After all, why would a Viking warrior be wandering through a modern day forest?

If you’re at all interested in the answer to that question, by all means, give the film a watch. Just be prepared for disappointment. Jef Richard’s 1987 disaster BERSERKER is a slasher film with only four victims, two of whom are killed within the first five minutes. Instead of typical slasher fun, we’re given an odd bit of quasi-supernatural mystery thriller. Are the killings the result of a temperamental brown bear or is there really a berserker lurking in the woods? The resulting film feels like a GRIZZLY rip-off that was retconned into a slasher film just to make the project marketable. The answer to that question is “both”. We get an unhappy bear AND a man possessed by the spirit of a Viking warrior. One or the other would have sufficed.

We do get the requisite nudity and the juicy (albeit poorly executed) murder set pieces, but any slasher appeal the film might have had is lost amid all the bad pacing, horrible characters and overall sloppy filmmaking. The film contains a few pop rock songs, all of which are played in their entirety over montages of vaguely homoerotic tomfoolery (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Our lead character is an insufferable brat, a 30-something man-child who bitches and moans about every little thing. He pitches a fit when the cabin he wanted turns out to be unavailable. He blasts his boombox while his friends are trying to sleep simply because he happens to be bored. It’s amazing he has any friends to begin with. The fact that he survives the film is a major slap in the face.

You know it’s bad when the only real positive I can think of is that the film actually takes place at night. Sure, the production couldn’t afford furniture to place inside the supposed awesome cabin these folks are headed to. Sure, the production couldn’t properly stage the climatic bear vs berserker fight, opting to intercut real bear footage with a man in a loose fitting, utterly unconvincing bear mascot costume. But they didn’t use a single day-for-night shot in the entire film. Kudos for that.

The only two non-college aged (read: in their 30s) characters are a local police officer, played by an actor who looks a bit like Hal Holbrook and moves at 1/4th the speed of a normal human being, and Pappy, the woodsman and caretaker of the retreat. Pappy is played by George ‘Buck’ Flower, a veteran character actor who usually turns in a solid, memorable performance. Here, playing a Norwegian, Flower can barely muster a convincing accent, often sounding more like the Swedish Chef than a Norwegian immigrant. All of this should have accumulated in a minor camp classic. So why is this film not fun at all?

It’s because BERSERKER is poorly made and woefully underwritten. Leaving aside the opening murder of the elderly couple, there isn’t a single drop of blood spilled until the 40 minute mark. After two of the women are messily dispatched, our remaining characters spend 15 whole minutes wandering through the woods. It’s like the writers didn’t have enough material to work with or just couldn’t think of anything for these people to do. The first half is spent sitting around, bickering, making out, and shooting the shit. It’s excusable. After all, it’s all set up. But that set up has to pay off and here, it simply doesn’t. Just when the film feels like it’s about to take flight, it peters out completely and never recovers.

There’s no large scale chase, no fight with the killer berserker, no chasing off the bear with sticks and stone. Just walking, tripping, bitching, walking, yelling, tripping, walking… The final five minutes of the film involves the grand reveal, the big moment when we finally find out who is possessed by the spirit of a Viking madman. Even this feels half thought out and lazy, raising far more questions about the underlying mythology of the film than it can even begin to answer. It’s an unsatisfying conclusion to an unsatisfying film, something I never thought I would say about a slasher movie in which a half naked, killer Viking takes on a gigantic brown bear in claw-to-claw combat.

Also, the poster for the film looks an awful lot like the poster for PINK FLOYD: THE WALL, doesn’t it? Kinda makes me wish they would have thrown in some musical numbers while they were at it.