Slashed Dreams (1975) — Triskaidekafiles

SLASHED DREAMS

WRITERS: Screenplay by James Keach
Based on an original screenplay by David Pritchard

DIRECTOR: James Polakof

STARRING: Peter Hooten as Robert
Kathrine Bauman as Jenny
Ric Carrott as Marshall
Anne Lockhart as Tina
Robert Englund as Michael
James Keach as Levon
David Pritchard as Danker
Rudy Vallee as Proprietor

QUICK CUT: A couple goes off into the woods to reunite with an old friend.

THE MORGUE

Robert - A young college student who has been friends with Jenny his whole life, and long had a crush on her. He’s a nice guy who will do anything for her.

Jenny - A sweet girl who is with the wrong guy, and loves her friends with all her heart.

Michael - A stoner who dropped out of school to go live in the woods and find himself. As one does.

Marshall - Jenny’s boyfriend at the start of the movie, and he’s a bit of a dick. Very jealous, doesn’t understand her, and always getting in people’s faces. He then buggers out of the movie never to be seen again.

Levon and Danker - Two local country boys who love the ladies and giving city folk a hard time.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! Summer is here, and it's time to head off into the woods, find some old friends, and try not to get Sunstroke! Which is the alternate title of this week's movie, Slashed Dreams. Huh, I think I’ve read that fanfic.

Spoiler alert, as always, I have watched this movie before sitting down to write my full notes and uh...I think this is gonna be a short one. There is not a lot here.

The credits roll for a bit and we meet some of our main characters, Robert and Jenny, as she gets a letter from their old friend Michael, who went off into the woods to get away from it all and find himself.

Which is when Jenny's boyfriend Marshall shows up to claim his territory, and they head back to class.

Sitting in on Magical Talismans 101 with Professor Ancient One

After class, they head back out into the credits, and this is the weirdest stop/starting of credits I've ever seen...but I digress.

You can tell there's a lot of tension between Marshall and Jenny, as he dunks on everything she says. Yeah that's a healthy relationship.

We go through a party at Marshall's frat house, where there's dancing and tormenting pledges and eventually Jenny and Marshall just break up to move this plot along.

Robert and Jenny decide to go off into the woods to find Michael. Marshall chases after them, throws a milkshake or something over Rob's windshield, and they have a confrontation on the highway.

Eventually Marshall is chased off...and these characters are never heard from again. That was a lot of track to lay that really goes nowhere.

The movie kicks into one of its many musical interludes it takes as we get from plot point A to plot point B. This is clearly a movie from another era.

Our zeroes get turned around and stop to ask directions. See, it's hard to find where a person lives when his location is in the middle of the woods, on a day long hike up the mountain. This is way WAY before GPS, or even Google Maps, kids.

Also, the movie takes a WEIRD side trip with the gas station proprietor being played by Rudy Vallee who has a microphone set up in the store?? And he's dressed up in a tux??? performing to no one???? I presume this was because they got Rudy Vallee to be in their movie, and he insisted, but...so weird to have your harbinger also be an entertainer.

Rudy goes on about how it's too far to travel, and much too dangerous, but...their friend LIVES there! It just...is SO weird.

As he goes on about how doomed they are, Rudy also offers them a knife free of charge, how they need to worry about THEM becoming the hunted. And then they leave the knife behind. Oops.

So they find the trail to start their journey, and SOMEhow are well stocked with backpacks and equipment for this extended hike. Good to see they came prepared on this very random out of the blue trip they took in the middle of the night??

"How long do you think it will take to get there?" "I don't even know where there is!" THEN HOW DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING?? This is a gigantic plothole. Their friend has no address just...off in the woods over there somewhere.

We slog through the forest, up cliff faces, with no less than three musical interludes to pass the time.

They make camp to sleep through their first night, and wake up to find a bear going through their stuff. This is almost one of the single most notable things in this entire movie, I am not kidding.

Eventually the bear finishes eating their food and wanders off, leaving them unharmed, damnit.

Robert finds some berries to eat for breakfast before they continue to wander aimlessly through the California mountains. He then smears some of the berries on her face and says now she can be Al Jolson. ...Was...was that racist?? hits Google

Oh...wow, okay, YES, but not for why I suspected. Jolson was white, and hailed as the "king of blackfae performers". Yikes. THAT'S a thing I now know because of this movie.

Jenny wanders off to take a dump in the woods, and *stumbles accidentally* on Michael's cabin. Holy shit. Oh, and he's not there, so you know what we're gonna do? Sit around and wait for him, because heaven forbid anything happens in this movie!

After raiding Mike's kitchen, which I am sure he will be thrilled at them using his precious supplies, Jenny goes down to the pond for some skinny dipping, and Rob does some dishes. And you know what this scene needs. More musical interlude while we sit and do nothing.

Rob does eventually join her, as he strips down too to cool off and keep the music going.

Fortunately, two others show up, so hopefully something will happen and aha haha ha, who am I kidding? Levon and Danker show up and perv on them a bit, and are generally creepy as they converse, but ultimately nothing happens.

This is borderline California Deliverance.

Levon notably asks if they have guns, and Robert gives the wrong answer. Much like gods, if someone asks if you have guns YOU SAY YES

So they head back to Michael's cabin to wait some more, worried about the pervy local yokels, but figuring if they were gonna do something, they would have.

Oh how wrong they were.

So let me recap the first 50 minutes of this movie so far; going to classes, dancing at a party, lots of driving, lots of hiking, lots of sitting around, lots of swimming, and more sitting around, and lots of songs with no dialogue.

And now here we are, and the movie goes from zero to uncomfortable real fast. Levon and Danker show up, beat up the couple, hold down Robert, and rape Jenny. Jesus

By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth, I am bound by the crimson bands of Cyttorak!

So yeah, a whole bunch of nothing, followed by several minutes of brutality and rape. That was...an experience.

And since Robert is knocked out, repeatedly! he can't stop it, and the only reason the attack ends is because the good ol' boys finish up and leave.

Jenny does some more sitting around, which is frustrating on the one hand, because it is this movie's go to move, but also understandable considering what just happened!!

But don't worry, another musical interlude montage is all you need to get past a rape!

Yes, that's when Michael finally returns, and Robert tells Mike what happened. He goes in to check on his friend and...the first words out of his mouth are, "It's so good to see you!”

Best thing to say when seeing an old friend after several years apart
Worst thing to say the morning after she was raped.

After a thrilling "what tea will he make??" scene, Michael says some kind and pointless words. But it seems to help to move the plot along.

So we stand and wander and talk a lot, and finally Robert hears something. He hands Mike back his mug of tea and runs off seeking vengeance, as Mike tosses out the tea.

“I’ll be right back, don’t throw out my tea!”

We at least get a bit of a knife fight between the good ol' boys and Rob, and quite honestly this is where the movie should have started, or at least had the end of the first act.

But they kinda end up kicking Rob's ass, and they only run off because Michael and Jenny show up, so they skadoot off into the woods. And that is the last we see of them. Yes, there is no comeuppance for the rapists.

Oh, but we do get one more musical interlude so Jenny can heal a little more, with a little help from a good swim!

And we end on Jenny flipping through one of Michael's books that gives her an inspirational BS quote something like how you must go through pain to better yourself. NO THIS IS NOT AN OKAY MESSAGE.

*stomps off to final thoughts*

Oh my god, Harry Potter was a trans boy this whole time!

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It’s…okay. It’s typical of a 50 pack movie, with some VHS artifacts. It could be worse.

Audio: Solid enough.

Sound Bite: “What a waste” says Robert after getting his ass handed to him a second time, and I could not have said it better myself.

Body Count: Not a single one. Almost a first, barring stuff like April Fool’s Day that has lots of deaths that are pranks. But it means we’re skipping a few sections.

Sex Appeal: Some bits of nudity towards the middle of the movie.

Drink Up! Every time there’s a song that comes on.

Movie Review: Well that may have been the most spectacularly pointless 75 minutes of my life. 50 minutes of wandering around, with random music. Then a random sudden brutal double rape of Jenny. Then nothing as she brushes it off in a few minutes, and her rapists escape unscathed. Just…wow. What was the idea here? You either could have had a revenge film squaring against Levon and Danker, or spend time with Jenny trying to deal with her trauma, but you get none of that. There’s 20 minutes left to go when the rape happens, and any sort of plot that could have come from this movie’s one and only plot point goes nowhere. Something so important goes absolutely nowhere. It is such an empty movie with one notable scene. On the upside, it’s well made, well shot, even with its brutality, and the acting is really good. Even Robert Englund, only in it for 10 minutes, gives a great performance early in his career. And that acting carries this movie. It’s such an anomaly of a movie that I do not understand why it exists or what it’s trying to say. Still, for being well made and coherent, it at least gets a three out of five skinny dips just for sheer competency.

Entertainment Value: It’s almost worth seeing just for an early appearance by Englund, and the acting is solid enough, but otherwise there’s nothing here. But if you can get past the one very uncomfortable moment, which is sadly also the sole interesting thing in the movie, it’s at least worth checking it out for curiosity. One out of five cabins.