It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong. I am not a big man. I am a witch, at least this month. And witches admit when they're wrong.
I have repeatedly declared this
The Worst Slasher Ever Made (and I’ve seen a lot of ‘em) but it has a lotta fans and I promised some folk around here I would re-watch it and give an updated opinion. I've been saying that for years and haven't done it. Because who wants to
re-watch The Worst Slasher Ever Made. To be honest, halfway through the movie, it was already above the 50th percentile and all it had to do was not blow it somewhere along the way. Which is what I thought happened last time. But I was wrong.
It’s really pretty good. I was reminded about what Hollywood has totally ****ed up about movies in the last, say, decade or so: If you care about the characters you’re invested in the movie.
This movie did a good job of giving me likable characters that I didn’t want to die. Even though I came to see them die. Like I said to a friend of mine while I was watching it, "I mean, this girl, who will be dead in the next five minutes, is just adorable, has real personality, and I like her. So her death will impact me, the audience. How f*cking hard is that?"
But there's also plenty of kills and gore, as everyone knows.
We all know about Tom Savini's gore and the way his work allows for the staging of a good kill. But kills are more than just effects, the staging is just as important if not more so and this movie does a great job of that. From this guy, to the actual first kill of the movie (a well-executed
double-kill with the pitchfork that's the preferred weapon here), the pool-kill, the gruesome and intense shower-kill... there's a lot of nice work.
But there's also suspense in this film, something slashers would lose very quickly. By
F13 4, suspense is kinda dead and it's all body-count and boobs. But The Prowler gives you nice, long stalks that take their time and build to the inevitable but now well-earned crescendo. The famous (to people who know the movie) pool-kill is a great example of this, it's a good buildup and payoff. And there’s a really nice scene here where The Prowler is stalking about and there are
two characters who might be the stalkee... but the way it's edited, you can’t tell which one. But the long stalk of the Final Girl is really effective as well (don't worry, no spoiler, it's obvious she's the Final Girl from the beginning).
It’s a low-budget like they all were in those early days but the actors are surprisingly good and it’s been a pretty good-looking movie on the budget. It was actually all shot at this charming place in New Jersey.
Spooky!
All in all, I will just come right out and say it, I was wrong. I wondered how it happened and then I remembered two things. One was that I was underwhelmed by the killer himself. Not that he wasn't cool enough when he was stalking but when he was revealed... but it's fine, it made sense. The other was that there's a moment in the movie that I must have looked away to get some popcorn or something the first time, just long enough that I thought the movie had introduced a
supernatural element that was then dropped. On re-watching it, no, it's obvious I was mistaken and I could see exactly how the mistake was made. Oh well.
So yeah, I liked
The Prowler and it is no longer
The Worst Slasher Ever Made.
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