Review by Ben Bussey
I don’t know; kids these days. Bloody hooligans, the lot of ’em. Specially them what were born within minutes of one another during a solar eclipse, who grow to be evil incarnate with a lust to kill anyone who crosses them, but the smarts to get clean away with it. There, in a nutshell (and from a grumpy old Yorkshireman perspective) is Bloody Birthday, a first wave American slasher movie getting a more than welcome British Blu-ray release from 88 Films. I must confess it’s one that I hadn’t seen before now, nor did I know much about it, and I daresay this lack of familiarity made me appreciate it that much more. While it’s very, very clearly a product of the slasher era, it sports a premise that’s just unconventional enough and takes just enough unexpected directions to keep things fresh. And hey, it’s got killer kids – that’ll always be a bit of a novelty.
At a glance, the three little kids born under a bad sign would appear to have almost nothing in common outside of their birthday; one of them’s the beloved daughter of the town sherriff, all blonde pigtails, pink dimples, sugar and spice and so forth; another’s your classic bespectacled smart boy; the other’s a bowlcut little leaguer. However, when the grown ups aren’t looking it’s all a different story. If they’re not peeping at big sisters getting changed or sadistically tormenting their classmates, they’re sneaking out after hours to murder naughty teens getting it on in the local graveyard. But as the body count rises in the run-up to their tenth birthday, their on-off friend Timmy and his astrologically-inclined big sister begin to suspect that the troublesome trio aren’t quite as innocent as they seem.
Yep, this is one of those movies that invariably leaves you thinking, “only in the 80s.” Killer kids movies are of course a bit of a rarity, and more often than not when a horror movie ventures into that territory it’s aiming for something genuinely dark and disturbing: say Village of the Damned, Children of the Corn, The Children, or Who Can Kill A Child (preferably not its recent excerable remake Come Out and Play). Bloody Birthday, however, is an 80s slasher movie through and through, which means the emphasis is squarely on sensation, on prompting shits and giggles with a little titilation on the side. Is this a painfully inappropriate route to take when the film’s cast consists largely of pre-teens? Well, yes – and that’s what makes Bloody Birthday so much damn fun. The whole thing drips with sly black humour; no doubt the grown-ups behind the camera were revelling in how wrong it all was, whilst the kids in front of the camera were surely having the time of their lives playing Satan’s little helpers. We can but hope so, anyway. The bespectacled kid in particular seems to be having an absolute blast brandishing a .44 like Travis Bickle Jr.
This being but one of the slew of slashers made around the turn of the 80s, it probably shouldn’t come as a great surprise that Bloody Birthday is often breathtakingly derivative of Halloween. Several scenes look like they might very well have been shot literally on the same street as John Carpenter’s trail-blazer, and a number of scenes – notably the bookworm final girl walking side-by-side with her friend the sherriff’s daughter – are pretty much lifted verbatim. It’s also little surprise that the film is techinically pretty basic, with fairly bog standard cinematography and little in the way of great gore. But again, this being the early 80s, Bloody Birthday squeezes in plenty of the cheapest special effect of all – yes, tits – with a number of obviously gratuitous sex scenes and Julie Brown as the big sister with a curious proclivity for performing bedroom stripteases in front of her Ted Nugent and Eric Estrada posters.
All things considered, if you like your trashy 80s horror this is definitely one you want to see. All I will say against it is I found the conclusion just a little bit of a letdown, but I won’t say why so as to avoid giving too much away. Be warned, though: the trailer below has no such qualms and shows pretty much all the best bits, so watch with discretion…
Bloody Birthday is released to UK Blu-Ray on 23rd June 2014, from 88 Films.