Review: Happy Birthday To Me (1981)

Stars: Melissa Sue Anderson, Matt Craven

Budget: $3.5-4.7 million

Directed By: J. Lee Thompson

nearly every holiday has a horror film based around it, but who ever thought that you most sacred of holidays, personal even, would be haunted by a killer nutcase.

The 80's was indeed a time of basing multiple horror films on holidays, from Halloween to even Friday the Thirteenth. Later things like even valentines day would see slashers based on them.

Made on quite a large budget for an 80s film, people like I wrote earlier say this film might be influenced from other slashers, but being released in 81 it was actually in pre-production before those films were released.

Unfortunately this film was seen as a video nasty and also was widely panned by critics. It has since gained a cult following like most things do as time goes by.

A lot of the money was used in promotions too which was a big foe-par. the studio did think they had something akin to Ft13TH on their hands.

So we join a group of students who are totted as the top ten in their school, each excelling at their chosen academics. This makes them appear privileged and popular to other students. The first kill is one of these students who is chased and harassed until she plays dead in her car, then running again she bumps into someone she apparently knows and gets herself murderised.

The rest of the gang become concerned when she, Bernadette doesn't show up to the pub, as they are all swots and generally never miss anything even a pub trip. It's quickly glossed over though. They leave the pub later and get silly playing chicken with a raising bridge.

Later our main girl Ginny stops in a graveyard to pay respects but as she is another member Etienne break int her room and steals some of her underwear. When Bernie fails to show for school the next day they all realise something is very wrong now, she wouldn't miss classes.

We also find out Ginny has a troubled past, she has repressed memories that keep surfacing to trouble her. We also find out she had some kind of operation after an accident with a drawbridge, which is why she was so freaked out earlier.

The rest of the top ten start to get murdered in a variety of different gory ways, one gets his scarf caught in a motorbike wheel. Another gets his neck crushed. The film tries it's best to put the blame of killer on a variety of other folk in the picture. Some, well most of which end up murdered themselves. Even Ginny at some points. But the film does end with a very odd twist that pretty much comes out of no where.

Which is where THN stops I though Happy birthday to me was okay, it's nothing special when compared with other slashers but I can see it being quirky enough to gain the following it has gained, you know I don't do half stars here so it does unfortunately miss out on 3 out of 5 for me, but really it's worth a watch if you haven't seen it then chalk it up to how you feel about.

put it in your menagerie of films 

or 

chalk it up to i've watched it now status.

THN awards Happy Birthday to Me a strong 2 out of 5 with recommendation to watch.

Review: Scream 5 (2022)

Stars: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox

Budget: $24 million

Directed By: Tyler Gillett, Matt Bettinelli-Opin

Well, well this got made didn't it, did we need a 5th scream movie? 

Probably not, but we got one anyway. I do like the dedication to Wes at the end it was very fitting. Now there's things I had heard from various sources about this film before I watched it.

Things like it was going meta like new nightmare etc but thankfully it didn't. This however is a double edged sword in this franchise, a franchise that tries to step out of the box with each part. Unfortunately only the first 2 ever coming close to this.

So 3, 4 and yes even this one become run of the mill who dunnit slasher flicks. Thankfully I went in spoiler free, so it did take me about 1/3 of the movie to guess at least one of the killers. Unfortunately this movie does the thing, you know white men not allowed to live or being the bad guy thing.

So from here out spoiler territory Dewey dies, yes the guy who has been stabbed in the back every movie before this yet lived meets his final stabbing. They do play it off in a nice send off for him in the end though, though I'd have preferred Gail to die myself. It's not particularly gory either though by today's standards the past films aren't to bad either but it's certainly tame, which may have helped a bit with OMG factor, but sadly not.

I won't spoil to much more other than once you guess who the killers are you'll be left scratching your head as to motive, though not entirely outlandish it just comes off as bland and by the numbers these days reasons for anything like that.

In film order I used to rank scream as 1-2-4-3 I now rank it as 1-2-4/5-3 why? Because as to now I'm flip flopping which I prefer/dislike the most. This did reasonably well at the box office with its smallish budget, we may see a 6 but I can already see the formula if they keep making them now, it'll be each older actor left killed off at some point in each subsequent movie.

THN awards Scream5 a meh-ish 2 out of 5 if you just want a slasher flick to watch.