The Prowler (1981)
Review by the Fiend of Grue
In 1945, after being dumped by his girl friend while overseas fighting in World War II, John returns home in full army gear and hunts his former love, Rosemary (Joy Glaccum). He finds her making out with her new boyfriend outside of their graduation dance and he vicious kills them both with a pitchfork. Signature Tom Savini blood gushing ensues. Fast forward to 1980 and The Prowler decides to start killing again once the school starts having the graduation dance for the first time since 1945.
The Prowler is your typical run of the mill slasher from the early 80’s with the usual cliches and stereotypical characters: The innocent blonde protagonist, the bad seed teens who smoke pot, drink and have obscene amounts of pre-marital sex. The movie starts off strong but does get a little slow on more than one occasion. When the prowler is stalking or chasing someone is easily the best parts of the film and the rest of the movie at times seems like it’s filler to get to the next kill scene.
A lot like the stylings of Halloween and, more poignantly, Friday The 13th, The Prowler doesn’t really stand on it’s own except for one thing…Tom Savini. The effects are A grade Savini doing it like no other and seeing this shows why he is still the man years after he stopped doing effects in movies. Kudos have to also be giving to director Joseph Zito -who went on to direct Friday The 13th Pt. IV - for having the balls to make such a graphic film. What makes this movie unique is the way in which the murders are so graphically and brutally shot. A lot of time in slasher pics from this era, the camera would pull away and the kill would happen off screen because the ratings board would never give it an R rating if they didn’t, but not here. These kills are shown in all of their gory glory and the camera NEVER pulls away. In fact the kills are shoved in your face to where you can’t escape them! It’s no wonder the film was heavily edited at the time, but now due to the wonderful medium of DVD, we can see the whole picture as it was intended. Blue Underground has released the fully uncut movie and I must also add that this is one of the few companies that has never let the horror community down. Consistently they have released title after title that have been ignored by others. I have never regretted buying any film I’ve got that they have put out. ……Alright, enough ass kissing, I know.
It’s amazing that since the industry obviously knows that we horror fans are whores for gore and brutality, there wasn’t ever a sequel. Considering the ending -which was a let down - it didn’t really allow for a sequel opportunity, I guess. It’s rare that a horror film doesn’t get at least one sequel and even much rarer that the ending isn’t left open for said sequel. It’s probably better The Prowler was left at just one, though, because a sequel isn’t really needed here and I guess the filmmakers realized that.
The Prowler is not the best slasher by any means, but definitely not the worst either and any fan of slasher movies should give this one a watch because you will probably like it more than the average Joe.
Popularity: 5% [?]
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