Visiting Hours (1982)
Slashers may be an American phenomenon, but when it comes to the leanest, pluckiest entries in the subgenre, you have to head north. Canada has produced some real gems, such as 1982’s Visiting Hours, which takes the hospital setting of Halloween II and stretches it to feature length.
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Directed by Jean-Claude Lord, who would later make the pleasing Terminator knockoff The Vindicator, and written by Brian Taggert, Visiting Hours stars the great Michael Ironside as Colt Hawker, a serial killer who gets his feelings hurt when commentator Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant) calls out his misogyny. After she survives his first attack, Colt follows Deborah to a hospital, where he plans to finish the job, killing a lot of other people—including Deborah’s boss, played by William Shatner—in the process.
The Mutilator (1984)
Many low-budget horror movies have multiple titles, changed up as the studio or distributor tries desperately to get people to pay attention to their movie. The Mutilator is no different, having originally been called Fall Break. Believe it or not, that safe, upbeat title actually fits much of the movie, which follows a bunch of college kids on a fall break trip to a beach house, and even begins with a sitcom-style theme song called, you guessed it, “Fall Break.”
Yet, in between the guileless good times, writer/director Buddy Cooper and co-director John S. Douglass insert scenes that definitely earn the title The Mutilator. The killer in The Mutilator dispatches his victims in cruel, slow-paced sequences that emphasize the suffering of victims (usually women in states of undress) who were goofing around just moments ago. The combination doesn’t make for a coherent film, but it does make The Mutilator a memorable movie, no matter what you call it.
Slaughter High (1986)
Fundamentally, all slasher movies go back to Psycho, which means that even the trashiest entry needs to have a psychological reason that the killer went nuts. In many ’80s slashers, that original sin involves a prank gone wrong, but few do it better than Slaughter High, written and directed by three people: Mark Ezra, George Dugdale and Peter Litten.
Are three heads better than one? Maybe not in terms of innovation, as Slaughter High follows a fairly rote plot. Ten years after a prank gone wrong kills one of their classmates, a group of young adults reconvene at their high school, only to be menaced by a slasher called the Jester. But one does get the sense of three guys egging each other on, as Slaughter High does contain some incredible death sequences and a truly gnarly shock ending.