Review: Chris Ward
Just when you thought there couldn’t be any more early ‘80s slasher movies for Arrow Video to exhume and give their customary polish to, they bring another lesser-known title to the party, this one being 1982’s Deadly Games. A fairly generic title that doesn’t give much away, Deadly Games is a slightly different beast from your run-of-the-mill teen slashers such as Friday the 13th and The Burning as there are more ‘adult’ themes at play beyond the black-gloved/ski-masked killer creeping about.
‘Adult’ in this case means that the cast are not the usual bunch of horny teens dressing up for a school prom, a trip to summer camp or going on a road trip; oh no, the cast here are definitely of the more mature variety (i.e. in their 30s but not pretending to be in high school) though are just as horny as teens, seeing as most of them are in relationships and are either sleeping with someone else, thinking about sleeping with someone else or are at least open to the idea of sleeping with someone else, which, when you consider the morality play element of your average slasher – the virginal ‘good’ character usually survives – then that casts a different perspective on things, as we are supposed to be rooting for flawed characters.
However, being flawed makes them more realistic and relatable and, in principle at least, lifts the material away from being a gory slasher and into dramatic thriller territory, which is pretty much what Deadly Games is. The movie begins in familiar territory for seasoned slasher fans by having a woman arrive home and strip naked in order to go for a moonlit walk, whilst unknowingly being watched by a masked killer wearing black gloves. The thing is, before the killer can get her, she falls to her death through a glass window next to a long drop and so the following investigation initially gets marked up as a suicide, but the victim’s sister Keegan (Jo Ann Harris) and detective Roger Lane (Sam Groom) know it isn’t suicide, as people committing suicide don’t tend to throw themselves through glass windows first; you see, it’s the little details that make this a more grown-up thriller.
Anyway, Keegan and Lane make eyes at each other and do a bit of flirting, but Lane is already married. Nevertheless, they persist and we discover that Lane is not a particularly nice man as he is nasty to his wife – who doesn’t seem to have done anything to deserve the bile aimed at her – and he does sleep around with other women. Doesn’t seem to put Keegan off, though, and as the investigation goes on it turns out that Lane has an ex-Vietnam vet friend called Billy (Steve Railsback) with whom he plays a horror movie-themed board game in an abandoned theatre, because why not? We also see via cut scenes that people seem to get killed whenever the dice in this board game is rolled, and so as Lane, Keegan and Billy become a bit of a threesome, the bodies start piling up – but who is the killer?
So yes, there is more of a focus on the relationships between the characters than you would usually get, which does mean quite a bit of nudity as people strip off and get romantic with each other so you can tick that off your ‘Is it a slasher?’ checklist, and Deadly Games does have a couple of decent kills – but it is only a couple. Jo Ann Harris is the standout here as she makes Keegan a very likeable character to follow (even if her grief for her dead sister is very short lived) and her bubbly presence makes the running time between kill/sex scenes a little more bearable, because if it was left up to just following the extremely horrible Roger Lane and his various conquests, then the sluggish pace would be a lot more problematic than it already is.
That said, the movie is very well shot and looks a lot more polished than some of the second-tier slashers of the era – Madman, Blood Rage, etc. – but at the end of it all (and the end is also a bit of a problem) Deadly Games is nothing more than a very average murder mystery with slasher leanings, elevated slightly by an older cast who seem to be taking it seriously but have been let down by clumsy writing and inconsistent pacing. For collectors, though, it will sit nicely on their shelf with other Arrow Video slasher movies as the artwork is excellent, and initial pressings come with a booklet featuring writings and perspectives on the film by author/historian Amanda Reyes, alongside extras including interviews with actor Jere Rae-Mansfield and special effects and stunt co-ordinator John Eggett, an audio commentary from The Hysteria Continues Podcast (it must be a slasher film then) and BD-ROM content of the original script. A nice package for collectors, but the film itself is just too unexciting to be put alongside the gorier, more violent post-Friday the 13th masked killer movies.
Deadly Games (1982) will be released by Arrow Video on Monday, 21st February, 2022.