Two couples become stranded on a rugged isle, and are haunted by a supernatural beast, drawn to the wife of one of the couples, who dreams of its killings.
Cast overview: | |||
Sarah Kendall | ... | Kay | |
Frederick Flynn | ... | Eric | |
Carol Kottenbrook | ... | Brooke | |
Alan McRae | ... | David | |
Michael Holmes | ... | Marsh | |
Sandy Simpson | ... | Norman | |
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Paul Gandolfo | ... | Fisherman |
Newell Alexander | ... | Kay's Father | |
Ivy Jones | ... | Kay's Mother | |
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Jennifer Gaffin | ... | Young Kay |
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Richard Van Brakel | ... | Young Eric |
Carl Kraines | ... | The Slayer |
Four young people vacation on a barren island. One of them, a female artist, has dreams that depict ghastly murders. Sure enough, the fun begins when her boyfriend is found dead. Written by Christopher S. Bultman <meatmanmiller@mail.utexas.edu>
The Slayer (1982)
** (out of 4)
Kay (Sarah Kendall), her husband David (Alan McRae), her brother Eric (Frederick Flynn) and his wife Brooke (Carol Kottenbrook) decide to go on vacation because of Kay's strange dreams that are harming her life. She claims that her dreams tells her things and before long someone shows up and starts picking them off one by one.
THE SLAYER is a mildly entertaining slasher movie that manages to have a few good moments scattered throughout its running time but at the same time there are certainly some flaws to be found with the picture. There were countless slash and dice movies throughout the 1980s and this here really isn't very popular and in fact it pretty much disappeared there for a while until Arrow Video remastered it and released and uncut version, which is what I'm reviewing here.
The thing the film has going for it are the special effects. This isn't really a flat-out slasher but we basically have a group of people being stalked by someone or something. This leads to some pretty good killings including three of them that are quite graphic when it comes to the blood. Fans of this type of stuff will certainly enjoy the effects and wish that there were more of them. I'd also argue that there's one intense sequence where the first victim is wondering around looking for something.
The performances aren't the greatest that you're going to see but I thought all four were good enough for this type of film and I'd argue that they were rather realistic when it came to the performances. They all seemed like actual siblings and friends and I thought this added to the picture. With all of that being said, THE SLAYER really doesn't have much of a story and sadly the majority of it is quite boring. This includes an extremely long sequence where one of the members goes missing and the rest walk around and walk around and walk around some more looking for him. This entire sequence was incredibly boring and just went on way too long.
It's really too bad that THE SLAYER didn't have a few more slayings because there's no question that these were the best parts of the film.