1975's "Slashed Dreams" should be on a double-bill with 1973's "Caged Terror", another film that strived for a (pretentious) "deep, man" message and also featured a young, white heterosexual couple out in the woods, skinny-dipping (no frontal this time) and being terrorized by two creepy men. Both films also feature the man smearing something reddish onto the woman's face. Perhaps "Slashed Dreams" is the remake of "Caged Terror". How necessary.
The set-up is simple: A female college student with a boyfriend who loves her but, conveniently, is a major jerk, heads off to the woods with her saintly childhood male friend, of whom the boyfriend is jealous and so makes of at every opportunity. Deep in the woods is their college drop-out friend, Michael, played by post-Whitey, pre-Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund. He has built an almost see-through cabin in the woods and has apparently found the answer to life's problems and, subsequently, soft-talking inner-peace by doing so. (The jerk boyfriend also made fun of Michael, natch.) The film turns out to be a musical. As with "Caged Terror", there is not much of a story; therefore, there is much padding. An unfortunate selection of songs -- seemingly appearing every seven minutes -- were chosen to make the viewer feel happy or sad, depending on the scene. The songs are mostly sung by a female in ear-splitting fashion, and all of them give 70s folk music a bad name. In one scene, as the woman tries to follow the man up to a cliff, the weight of the camping gear on her back causes her to slide down the dirt. This scene is accompanied by a song apparently entitled "Animals Are Clumsy, Too", a light-hearted song that reminds us that for every time we find ourselves bumping our knee against a bedpost, somewhere there is a calf walking around with one leg stuck in a milk jug.
Since this happy young couple receive -- yet laugh off -- a warning about wandering the woods alone, it is certain that something bad will happen. And it does. And then the movie meanders along while the bad thing seems to go through the seven stages of grief. Michael finally shows up and apparently has discovered the ways of the Native Americans, and therefore brews up just the right tea for the traumatic occasion.
A poem found in a book seems to be the key to the film's outcome, and I was left saying "What??" It seems that, as in "Caged Terror", being the recipient of a certain act of violence is actually a GOOD thing for it elevates the victim to a higher plane, freeing her- or himself of physical and spiritual shackles, and leading her or him to a greater understanding of the world, and to a calming inner-peace. Not only does this film give ammunition to anti-70s folk music sentiment, but to New Age beliefs as well.
This is even less 'worth-seeing' than "Caged Terror".
The set-up is simple: A female college student with a boyfriend who loves her but, conveniently, is a major jerk, heads off to the woods with her saintly childhood male friend, of whom the boyfriend is jealous and so makes of at every opportunity. Deep in the woods is their college drop-out friend, Michael, played by post-Whitey, pre-Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund. He has built an almost see-through cabin in the woods and has apparently found the answer to life's problems and, subsequently, soft-talking inner-peace by doing so. (The jerk boyfriend also made fun of Michael, natch.) The film turns out to be a musical. As with "Caged Terror", there is not much of a story; therefore, there is much padding. An unfortunate selection of songs -- seemingly appearing every seven minutes -- were chosen to make the viewer feel happy or sad, depending on the scene. The songs are mostly sung by a female in ear-splitting fashion, and all of them give 70s folk music a bad name. In one scene, as the woman tries to follow the man up to a cliff, the weight of the camping gear on her back causes her to slide down the dirt. This scene is accompanied by a song apparently entitled "Animals Are Clumsy, Too", a light-hearted song that reminds us that for every time we find ourselves bumping our knee against a bedpost, somewhere there is a calf walking around with one leg stuck in a milk jug.
Since this happy young couple receive -- yet laugh off -- a warning about wandering the woods alone, it is certain that something bad will happen. And it does. And then the movie meanders along while the bad thing seems to go through the seven stages of grief. Michael finally shows up and apparently has discovered the ways of the Native Americans, and therefore brews up just the right tea for the traumatic occasion.
A poem found in a book seems to be the key to the film's outcome, and I was left saying "What??" It seems that, as in "Caged Terror", being the recipient of a certain act of violence is actually a GOOD thing for it elevates the victim to a higher plane, freeing her- or himself of physical and spiritual shackles, and leading her or him to a greater understanding of the world, and to a calming inner-peace. Not only does this film give ammunition to anti-70s folk music sentiment, but to New Age beliefs as well.
This is even less 'worth-seeing' than "Caged Terror".