Scalps

Director - Fred Olen Ray (Evil Toons, Haunted Fear)

Starring - Jo-Ann Robinson (The Devil's Dolls, Malicious), Richard Hench (Biohazard, The Tomb), and Roger Maycock 

Release Date - 1983

Genre - Horror

Tagline - "They came out of the grave...to get REVENGE!"

Format - Bluray (Personal Collection)

Rating (out of 5):

     Some movies are just nostalgic for the viewer.  They may be horrible movies but you revisit them because you have fond memories of watching them with friends of family.  When I was in high school, and the year or so after I graduated, I had a group of friends that loved horror movies.  We would often get together to drink cheap beer and watch movies all night.  It was a damn good time.  On one of these nights a friend had purchased Fred Olen Ray's Scalps on DVD to watch.  I don't remember a lot about the movie but I do remember the drunken antics that took place that night.  I required that copy from my friend and often gave it a spin in college whenever I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders.  Sometime back Makeflix announced that they would be selling copies of the film on blu.  I knew my DVD was beat up and on it's last leg so I decided to upgrade and revisit it again for old times sake.

     The film follows a group of college students as they head out into Native American territory in search of burial grounds.  When they uncover an ancient relic they accidentally release an evil spirit hellbent on killing anyone on their sacred land.

     Scalps is an interesting spin on the early 80s slasher.  We are moved from the woods to the desert and the masked slasher is replaced with an evil Native American spirit.  This is some seriously fun ideas for a slasher but the scenes and dialogue is painfully dull.  The acting in this one is standard early 80s slasher.  The characters are very cliched and the performances are very unenthused.  The cast does their thing with some effort but they are not fully committed to their roles.  The way they deliver their dialogue is almost cringy.  They just say it and move on to the next portion.  Sadly, this is pretty typical of slashers of the time.  The story for this one, as I stated earlier, is a pretty fun twist on the slasher sub-genre.  I would have loved to see the Native American angle explored further with more of their mythology introduced into the film.  My biggest upset with the film is how they are in the middle of the desert with nowhere to run and as they are picked off by the possessed they don't seem to be venturing any further away from their stuff.  The scope of the film is so small when you consider how much space they have to go.  That's always been my biggest draw back with this film.  It's so constricting while the space is vast.  Finally, the kills are cheap but the scalping scene is pretty fun.  Similar to the effects in Ray's Haunting Fear, we get some genuinely cheap looking practical effects in a few of the death scenes but the scalping scene is a really fun gag.  It's cheap but I love how it looks.  Overall, Scalps is a mediocre slasher film from the golden age of slashers.  It has a lot of nostalgia for me but I also know that it's a tough one to finish.  The blu from Retromedia is not upscaled at all.  It's the same quality as the shitty DVD I've had for all these years.  It looks nothing like these other releases that I've reviewed.  Honestly, if you need it for your collection I would the cheapest route possible because this release is nothing to spend the extra cash for.