Bloody Murder (2000)

It is customary for a review of the 2000 slasher Bloody Murder to start by decrying the film as a “Friday the 13th ripoff”. There are, of course, many Friday the 13th ripoffs (see the Burning, Madman, Sleepaway Camp, and even the later Halloween films), but the designation is especially fitting for Bloody Murder, not just because it is set at a summer camp and hearkens back to a gruesome legend, but most obviously because the main antagonist and subject of said legend, Trevor Moorehouse, wears a hockey mask, as did Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th Part 3 onward. It also doesn't help Bloody Murder's case that it features a character named Jason who (mild spoiler alert here) is suspected of the killings throughout a good portion of the film. But this “ripoff” designation requires some qualification. First, it should be noted that Jason Voorhees wears an early-80s style hockey mask, while Trevor Moorehouse wears a newer model street-hockey mask, more in the style of Lord Humungus from the Road Warrior. Moreover, Trevor Moorehouse is pictured on the poster art carrying a chainsaw, which he brandishes at certain junctures in the movie. In this aspect, he is more akin to Leatherface of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In addition, Moorehouse's chosen attire is a dark blue mechanic's suit, reminiscent of Halloween's Michael Myers. Hence, Moorehouse is more accurately characterized as a synthesis of the holy trinity of slasher baddies. Such a grand synthesis is, to be sure, worthy of a better movie than Bloody Murder.

Directing duties on Bloody Murder are credited to one Ralph Portillo. Ralph Portillo claims an assortment of directorial and production credits, among them the Corey Haim vehicle Fear Lake. In the early to mid-90s, the name Ralph Portillo also appears on a number of straight-to-video erotic features, including the Hollywood Dreams duology, Stolen Hearts, and Prelude to Love. If one does their research on IMDb, these softcore films redirect to the page for one Rafe M. Portilo, while Bloody Murder, Fear Lake and other forgettable fare are credited to Ralph E. Portillo. Though Portilo and Portillo appear to be different people by IMDb's reckoning, Bloody Murder's cinematography bears a striking resemblance to the aforementioned erotic fare. The scenes are brightly lit, even at night, and tend toward rubicund coloration. The shots are predominantly mid-range and overbearingly procedural. The blocking, meanwhile, is wooden, all the characters gathering around to recite their dialogue with a certain clipped emptiness. A lot of the female characters stand with hands on hips. Whether or not Ralph E. Portillo is Rafe M. Portillo, these similarities give Bloody Murder a distinct softcore porn vibe, even though there is no simulated sex or nudity in the film. This is a major flaw for a film purporting to be a slasher, as is the paucity of blood. All told, Bloody Murder can just as readily be described as a whodunnit suspense film, which is precisely how Ralph E. Portillo characterizes it in more recent self-penned bios (which also mention nothing of the softcore oeuvre).

The future of hockey-masked horror

should look to the past

Derivative flop of not, Bloody Murder poses crucial questions about the slasher genre. For instance, is the hockey mask absolutely off-limits for all non-Friday the 13th films? This reviewer would argue that the hockey mask is still rife with possibility. We've seen the 80s and street-hockey styles, but why not hearken back even further? A mask in the style of Boston Bruins stalwart Gerry Cheevers, painted with stitches in places where pucks would have done serious damage had they hit the flesh, would make for an especially dastardly pursuer, would they not? Or perhaps directors could go back even further to the original goalie mask donned by Jacques Plante after he took one too many hunks of vulcanized rubber to the face. The Plante mask almost has a Hannibal Lecter vibe to it. And then there is the cage-style mask donned by none better than "The Dominator" Dominic Hasek, the greatest goalie to ever play the game. Finally, if a budding Ralph Portillo wanted to go more contemporary, he (or she) could have their villain wear the modern-day goalie helmet, which would allow much-improved sight-lines for stalking and slashing teen counsellors. In short, the possibilities for hockey-masked killers are legion, and so this sub-sub-genre of the slasher flick needn't be put on ice.

The Town that Dreaded Sundown (2014)

In 1976, director Charles B. Pierce brought us The Town that Dreaded Sundown, a quasi-true crime film in the spirit of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film reimagined, sometimes quite liberally, the so-called "Phantom Killings" that racked the twin border-towns of Texarkana, Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas in the early 1940s. Pierce took details of the events—for instance, the hood that "The Phantom" allegedly wore—and created from them an exploitation proto-slasher that somehow managed a PG-13 rating. The film has its moments, but it is only as good as you would imagine a PG-13 slasher could be. Moreover, historically-minded types have panned the film for its factual inaccuracies (see, for instance, James Presley's meticulously researched 2016 book The Phantom Killer). Regardless, the film maintains a cult following, and is still publicly screened in Texarkana at certain junctures, including Halloween.

In 2014, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon directed a film also bearing the title The Town that Dreaded Sundown. Gomez-Rejon is perhaps best known for directing episodes of American Horror Story, and, true to 1) that series, 2) the era, and 3) the nature of horror remakes in general, his take on the Texarkana tragedy is unapologetically meta. The 2014 Sundown is not exactly a remake, however, nor can it properly be called a sequel, even though it has aspects of each. The film takes place more-or-less within our continuity, that is, real-world 2013, where the Phantom murders took place in the 1940s and the 1976 version of The Town that Dreaded Sundown is just a movie. In fact, the opening scene takes place at a Halloween public screening of Sundown '76 in Texarkana. Furthermore, it becomes clear early on that the antagonizing force in the 2014 film is intent on re-creating the murders depicted in the 1976 film. As could be expected, the 2014 film is full of set-pieces in which the director, writer, and producers show the audience how well they know the original movie, the history of the events, and the conventions of the genre and the medium as a whole. How meta did they go? Suffice it to say that Charles B. Pierce's son is a character in the movie. So heavy is the meta-commentary that, in the scene where the sheriff character played by Gary Cole is receiving fellatio from a haggard Texarkana bar-star, you half-expect him to utter a "yeaaaaaaah" and then start talking about TPS reports. But the repeated all-knowing nods are, on the whole, only mildly annoying, and no more obtrusive than in any other post-2000 horror remake. In fact, the 2014 Sundown handles the meta elements more deftly than most other horror films of its ilk, where the writers lean heavily on in-jokes to address an obvious paucity in original content (see, for instance, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil). Sundown 2014's meta approach comes to a head at the climax, which —and I offer the mildest of spoiler alerts here—quite cleverly plays on the split identity of Texarkana itself (as a border-town). On the whole, the film is well-realized, and Texarkana proves to be as convincing a hellscape as Arkham or Derry or Amityville. I have no problem recommending 2014's The Town that Dreaded Sundown, though the 1976 version is a necessary prerequisite for viewing.

Even though I'll advocate for the past and current versions of the film, I nonetheless have trepidations about the future. Meta-storytelling is not just a fad in mainstream horror; rather, it has become a crutch. Given that this brand of genre auto-commentary has been going strong since 1996's Scream, it raises the question: what will The Town that Dreaded Sundown (2052) look like? Will it be a meta-meta-commentary on the subject matter? Will it be the story of a killer recreating the 2013 film's re-creation of the 1976 film (itself a re-creation of the narrative surrounding the ur-murders)? Perhaps the real question is when will the meta-commentary stop in contemporary horror? When will writers and producers start generating new ideas? When will the idea that there's nothing new under the sun see its much-needed sundown? For now, this reviewer is left feeling like a lot of the residents of Texarkana, fearing the return of the Phantom. He might come back sooner rather than later. In this sense, it's The Town that Dreaded Sundown (2024) that I find truly dreadful.