A remembrance of things past

I've been going back to my local video store Movie Madness lately. Partly it is because I want to support local business, but also because I end up finding things I don't think to put in my Netflix queue. The latest trip led to a terrible mistake.

I had recalled a list of horror movies with great endings from Ten Bad Dates with De Niro. One was the excellent Sleepaway Camp, which does in fact have a jaw dropping finale. For some reason I had it in my head that The House on Sorority Row was on the list. I later realized the movie I was thinking of was April Fool's Day, which probably sucks as bad as the movie I watched.

The movie I saw lacked any reason watching. The acting was piss poor. The story is ridiculous and obvious. Sorority house mother has bad birth experience and when sorority sisters think they have killed her, someone starts killing them. Whatever, why am I bothering? It is shitty like all the other movies of its ilk, the terrible stalker film of the 80s. I watched til the end, which was an uninteresting rip-off of Black Christmas. Bad, bad, bad. I should have watched another episode of the Prisoner.

What is more interesting is why these movies were popular. It is as inexplicable of as the popularity of hair metal. Why did such utter tripe make so much money? Later the same night I watched a little of The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film. It made me dislike these movies all the more. It reminded that one or two (Halloween and Black Christmas) are worth a damn, but I took from it that people just wanted to see people die in different ways. Lovely.

There really isn't much else to the movies, but many of those interviewed tried to dress them up as art or expressions of the time, blah, blah, blah. They are just friendlier versions of Salo.