slashers

"Donner Pass" opens with a flashback, all the way to 1846 and an alternate retelling of the fabled "Donner Party" story pertaining to a group of settlers lost in the mountains who were forced to resort to cannibalism in the face of starvation. This retelling plays out a little differently however, with George Donner himself returning to the camp and murdering the remaining survivors, only to string them up and drain their blood. Seems like an odd choice, given how hard it is to survive in the woods by yourself. As we'll learn in due time though, Donner knew what he was doing.

Sometimes reviewing a movie in a viewer advisory capacity sucks the fun right out of that film. This is especially true when one is given the task of registering an opinion on a film like “Slaughter High”. I have talked before about how my socialized adult brain limits my enjoyment of the things that my inner teen finds endlessly amusing.

Dario Argento has taken a lot of flack from fans who are awaiting the filmmakers’ return to the form that made him a defining force in the evolution of the horror film during the latter half of the 20th century. But has the form really ever changed or is Argento just taking his style into new technical and aesthetic realms in an effort to keep himself interested in the craft? His early works are hardly uniform even if similarities exist.