SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE – You can tell a guy has a phallus problem when his murder weapon of choice is a massive, massive drill. We don't really get to know the killer in 'Slumber Party Massacre' well enough to gain insight into any of his particular resentments, but it's also true that he doesn't appear to like young women, either. 'Slumber Party Massacre' has an interesting pedigree in that it was written by prominent feminist Rita Mae Brown, and was reportedly intended as a slasher parody before it ended up being taken literally by the studio. Watching it now, you can see an uneven mix of humour and leaden straightness up there on screen, but it never really comes across as the knowing deconstruction of the genre it may have started out as. In fact, the problem with 'Slumber Party Massacre' is that ultimately it's too formulaic to bring anything new to the slasher template, and also that it's too competent to let any unintentional back door weirdness in, unlike loads of badly made indies of the same era. It's entertaining enough, there's a bit of splatter and the killer is strangely refreshing in his slight blandness, but it also drags mid-section which is a bit of a no-no for a film which is under eighty minutes long. An inessential addition to the slasher cycle which could perhaps have been way more interesting given some of those involved, 'Slumber Part Massacre' is still no doubt worth checking out for completists.
FRONTIERE(S) – The streets of Paris blaze with gunfire as a carload of rioters escapes to the countryside. So begins 'Frontiere(s)', Xavier Gens' contribution to the French new wave of splatter, a cluster of movies which, in the early to mid noughties, matched stylistic slickness with a heavy emphasis on explicit gore. Whereas films like 'Martyrs' have carved out a foothold in the history of horror, 'Frontiere(s)' seems less likely to resist the genre's evolution, despite mananging to generate some controversy on its initial release. Before I slipped it on the other day, I remembered 'Frontiere(s)' as being quite gruelling, and certainly really violent. Although it possesses both of these qualities to an extent, it failed to grab me this time around, its transgressive swagger dulled by the years but also by longueurs intrinsic to the film. By the time we meet the apparently TCM inspired backwoods neo-nazis who serve as our villains we have aleady been through too much on screen drama, and the characters' descent into subjugation and depravity is somehow free of much tension. There's an interesting idea at the heart of 'Frontiere(s)', one which links national identity, authoritarianism and cannibalism, but it only seems partially exploited, and frankly a film which sets itself up on the back of national tensions around race and the resurgence of the far right is better off in a different genre... I mean, I'll be the last to say things like “keep politics out of horror”, but you can only go so far when very specific and real issues demand close examination, or rather at least a framework where the imaginary elements don't detract. Still, 'Frontiere(s)' offers an interesting and off-putting mix of contradictions, and is far from the usual anodyne genre product, so should certainly be seen.
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