Scalps (1983)
Directed by Fred Olen Ray
The 1980s, the decade of excess and the slasher movie. After Halloween blew up in the late 70s, thousands of rip-off slashers followed, believe me, an ass-load of them! I have seen so many escaped lunatic slasher movies that when I find something different, it is greatly refreshing! I can appreciate someone making something different, even if it is low budget and or complete shit. Scalps was definitely an original take on the genre and it has to be praised for being out of the ordinary. I have been hunting this down for a while, I refused to pay the ridiculous price for the out of print DVD and for a long time there wasn’t another release (it is now on blu-ray for like $15). I found this on youtube the other day, so whilst doing cardio at the gym the other day I put it on, finish the rest at home (thank god, I’ll explain that later).
Scalps is about a group of archeology students going to the Californian desert to dig. Of course, they meet an old Indian man on the way to the site and the warns them about digging in that area, he says many Indian warriors became one with the earth in that area. Logically the group digs anyway and shit starts going down!
The acting, my lord the acting, it is top fuckin notch! Yeah it is not, in fact it is some of the worst acting I’ve seen in a slasher movie, and that my friends, is impressive! The actors are wooden, the dialogue is awkward, and even the expressions are far off base. I can’t even pick out which one is the best, because they all are pretty bad, maybe the professor? The characters, I can’t even remember their names. I just referred to them as Kenny Loggins, Steven Hyde, Jefferson D’Arcy for the guys and for the girls: Blonde, Brown, and Red. The only name I can remember is Ben aka Kenny Loggins. Obviously, he’s not actually played by Kenny, the guy just looks like him.
The camera work isn’t bad, you get some cool shots of the scenery and it adds to the creepiness of the film. One of my favorite aspects of the film is the complete lack of attention to night and day. Many times, you’ll see the group by a bonfire and it is so dark you can’t see past the group and their tents, then the next scene two of the people will walk off and it is dusk. I was laughing out loud at those parts in the movie, day time, night time, day time, night time. There are some parts where the sound is just gone, it is odd and hard to explain. One scene sticks out where Brown is screaming, but you only hear the music in the background. Music? Oh yes, there is maybe a total of 2 minutes in the entire film where there isn’t music playing in the background. I have never seen a film do this, it was kind of distracting and the intense score is decent, just doesn’t make sense when two characters are just standing there talking.
The special effects are average. Some scenes are quite gory, you get a decapitation and a scalping, which is genuinely effective. The decapitation is kind of funny, Steven Hyde’s head gets lopped off and his hands grasp around frantically. I think they were trying to recreate Mrs. Voorhees at the end of Friday the 13th, but while her hands grasped once slowly, Hyde’s hands grasp super-fast like 20 times haha. The make up effects on the Indian spirits that possess the characters is kind of crappy. It looks like someone just slathered bean dip on their face. Basically, think of the most racist depiction of a Native American, say Chief Wahoo, and slather his face in refried beans, that’s what you get in Scalps. For the budget being so low, the effects are alright, I have seen worse and I have seen much better.
All in all, this movie isn’t good, is it horrible? No not really, I had a fun time watching this and I laughed in many spots. The reason I was happy about finishing this movie at home? A rape scene…which I watched with my wife, ugh! I hate rape scenes, they are so unnecessary, especially in this movie. There is really no reason to have a rape scene in a movie about ancient Indian spirits possessing campers and forcing them to murder others. For a budget of $15,000 and a movie directed by a guy that made hundreds of softcore porn movies, Scalps is something of a miracle honestly. I had fun watching it but I really can’t give this anything more than a D+.
