THE SLAYER: Arrow Video; 2 disc Blu-ray and DVD + 36 page booklet
$55.00
Slasher, Horror, Gore, Video Nasties, Cult, Banned; 2 disc (Blu-ray and DVD) + 36 page booklet – Ex Used condition
In the early 80s the cinema screens ran hot red with celluloid crimson such as Tobe Hooper’s freaky ‘Funhouse’ and Sam Raimi’s demonic ‘Evil Dead’ and another adamantine terror title that has stood the time no less rigorously is J.S Cardone’s undeniably sinister, surrealistic nightmare ‘The Slayer’ (1982). Like a goodly few grisly epics released back then, perhaps Cardone’s fear-soaked feature was simply too effective for its own good and was only generally seen in a heavily truncated version until its recent and somewhat miraculous-looking Blu-ray restoration! Two clean-cut, well to-do couples take a brief holiday break on a palpably eerie, apparently unpopulated island in picturesque, storm-lashed Georgia, where Eric (Frederick J. Flynn) pragmatic older brother to his increasingly depressed, nightmare-riddled artist sister Kay (Sarah Kendall) optimistically rented a rather isolated house for them, the amicable, close-knit friends flown there by the splendidly archetypal, doom-auguring pilot Marsh (Michael Holmes) and it is not long after their arrival that the monosyllabic, hatchet-faced Marsh ominously foreshadows: “This island is the sort of place folk’s dream about!’ and when the plainly anxious, long-suffering Kay’s surreal, deeply felt premonitions are so vividly emancipated from her fitful womb of sinister sleep into gruesome, wide-scream, blood n’ guts reality that ‘The Slayer’ becomes a truly unforgettable nightmare! Even when only previously seen in its crudely censored version ‘The Slayer’ maintained its intrinsic darkness; the film’s decidedly oppressive location and Kay’s awful solitude remained intact, her increasing hysteria and tangible descent into despair along with the film’s robust technical merits elevated it to being one of the more memorable, independently produced 80s slashers. And some modest intrigue remains whether director Cardone’s prescient horror visions penetrated Wes Craven’s fertile imagination to the point of perhaps infinitesimally influencing his sleep-depriving, box-office smashing ‘Elm Street’ franchise? Who knows? Now finally released fully uncut, ‘The Slayer’ is a once slumbering B-Movie behemoth angrily reborn, with its murderous horns demonstratively unclipped, the burnished HD format doing much to reveal the film’s diabolical depths of psychologically disturbing, pulse-paralysing terror lurking within!
