Slaughterhouse Rock (1987) — Triskaidekafiles

SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROCK

WRITERS: Story by Dimitri Logothetis

Written by Sandra Willard and Nora Goodman

Screenplay by Ted Landon

DIRECTOR: Dimitri Logothetis

STARRING: Nicholas Celozzi as Alex Gardner

Tom Reilly as Richard Gardner

Donna Denton as Carolyn Harding

Hope Marie Carlton as Krista Halpern

Tamara Hyler as Jan Squires

Steven Brian Smith as Jack

Ty Miller as Marty

Toni Basil as Sammy Mitchell

QUICK CUT: A student’s nightmares keep his roommates awake at all hours, causing their grades and lives to suffer from the lack of sleep anyone is getting.

THE MORGUE

Alex - A college student haunted by nightmares. A loyal friend and caring brother, he would rather just keep his head down than put his life at risk.

Richard - Alex’s brother, who cares deeply about Alex. Also very horny and likes to sneak away for sex at every opportunity.

Jan - Alex’s love interest. She gets a bit too scared at times and reduces to little more than a damsel in distress, but she’s there when it matters.

Sammy - A rock star interested in death and the occult, who’s curiosity gets the better of her.

You can’t spell “Slaughter” without “Laughter”.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! This year's "Hey that's kinda like Elm Street" movie is called Slaughterhouse Rock, and sharp eyed readers might recognise that as the bonus feature that came with the movie I covered in December, Hard Rock Zombies. I normally don't talk about two movies in the same "package" in such close proximity, but this one was sitting right here, and I figured why not?

The movie opens up on a creepy, waterlogged, gooey tunnel, where Alex is chained to the wall. Kinky. I mean, er, there's a figure sloshing through the water towards him, as he tries to escape.

Just as Alex uses a handy blade to hack through his hand instead of the manacle, he wakes up because...IT WAS ALL A DREAM!

But then he pulls his hand into view, except it's not there! Because THAT WAS ALL A DREAM TOO ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

Later, Alex is coming out of school with his brother, Richard, and their roomie, and they are reading to him about a rock band who died on Alcatraz island during a tour there. The only reason they gave to connect this with Alex's dreams is that he said the place looked like a prison.

Which reminds me, I did intend to do this as another December "rock and roll horror" movie, expected since it came with Hard Rock Zombies, but the rock band ended up being such a minor plot, I went with the Elm Street of it all instead.

Back at their house, Richard's girlfriend Krista, and Jan who is interested in Alex, but they are yet to be a thing, show up so Krista can very loudly bang Richard in the next room.

Rather than sit there and listen to headboard banging against the wall, Alex and Jan opt to hit up a diner to grab some burgers and do some character building.

"So, what sort of decor do you envision for your restaurant?" "Give me screaming possums on the wall."

At least that's what Jan is trying to do. Alex on the other hand is so out of it from his lack of sleep, he's barely paying attention, as the wall behind him tries to Freddy out and grab him.

They head back to the house, and Alex tries to get everyone to stay up with him, since he is avoiding sleep, and could use the company. However, everyone else is normal, and goes their separate ways to pass out. Alex, unable to keep himself up by his lonesome, soon drifts back off to slumberland.

Alex gets up to pee or whatever, and his nightmare demon says NOPE. The monster busts through the bedroom door, and tears open the kid's chest, before the movie cuts away to the next day.

We jump almost immediately to another nightmare, as Alex is sitting in class, and envisions his face is rotting away. He wakes up screaming, alarming the whole class. This will also get the attention of the teacher, for a future plot point that we’ll get back to later.

That night, everyone is at the bar, and Jan offers to stay the night and watch over him, maybe get some more information about what's going on. Before they get too much further though, Alex hears the movie's soundtrack playing, and asks the bartender about the song.

It's a tune he's heard in his nightmares, and also a song by the band that got slaughtered at Alcatraz. Ahh, the plot thinnens.

While Alex sleeps, someone comes to the door, and Jan gets it. The teacher, Carolyn, has shown up to do her part of the plot, but before we can get too into that, they smell smoke.

The women rush to Alex's bedroom, and see him on fire. They quickly put him out, and he wakes up, but then they all see nothing has actually burned.

Does your crotch ever have that dry, burning feeling?

Before they awaken him though, Alex did see a man hacking up and eating someone, in an old, rustic cabin. But more on that later.

The trio head to the school, and professor infodump tells Alex about a bad man who worked at Alcatraz when it was just a cavalry outpost. During his tenure, there were strange disappearances, and eventually the outpost burned down, taking the commandant with it.

Professor Infodump wants to take a trip to the island, to see if they can find any evidence, or ghosts, or anything to move the plot along. Alex, on the other hand, remains sceptical, and not wanting to go any closer to the crispy cannibal ghost.

Alex bugs out to go home and try and not sleep. He fails miserably, and once again the group gets to witness some weird shit going down.

They call the teacher back in to huddle, and they all agree to head to Alcatraz in the middle of the night to try and figure this all out.

We will spend the rest of the movie, almost the last two thirds of it, just in the prison. This is such an oddly paced film. Thirty minutes wandering around town, getting to know the characters, a few dreams for plot purposes, and then an hour just in one, albeit large, location.

The group wanders around for awhile, doing a lot of complaining, and finally find a conveniently open door. They all head into the prison and explore.

As they delve deeper into the prison, Alex lags behind, and gets grabbed by someone else. It takes the group shockingly long to realise the whole point of this expedition has gone missing.

When they finally do, they also find Officer First Corpse O’Movie, arriving oh so very late to this picture. In all the screaming and running that causes, no one notices when *Richard* now goes missing.

Richard was dragged off by the Commandant, and essentially dies off camera. His body will be worn like a skinsuit by the baddie for the rest of the movie.

Meanwhile, Alex is laying on the floor, when a woman appears before him, whom he recognises as Sammy. The problem being, she's dead. But she then commands her song to play out of thin air, and we get even more exposition.

She called Alex to the island so he could fight the spirit of the Commandant, whom she set free accidentally when she came to Alcatraz for the tour. He's too powerful to just stop, and they have to release all the souls he has killed, and trapped on the island, and then take care of him.

Oh Richard, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group is making their way back to the boat, and that's when they notice they have also lost Richard.

Fortunately, they see Richard across the yard, and Krista rushes to see him. The false Richard leads her off into another room, and he starts making out with her and attacks her, until Krista runs off.

He is brutal, he ignores her, and it is...very uncomfortable to watch, knowing the multiple levels of deception here.

Back in the tunnels, Sammy dances to draw out Alex's spirit so she can give the adapted for the screen version of the commandant's story, and then how she came into the story. No real surprises here, but she is a rocker interested in the occult, found a manuscript found on Alcatraz, heard the myths and paid a visit. While there, she broke the urn containing the Commandant's spirit, and bing bam boom, the movie starts.

While they try and come up with a plan, Richard's ghost shows up for motivation, as well as the ghosts of Sammy's band. It is such a random inclusion, to have them there for all of five seconds, then never again. Richard at least makes some sense, since we’ve spent time with him already. But to see the band, and NO other ghosts, is so weird.

Alex goes back to his body and reunites with the group, and hey! So does Richard! Well, the possessed version does, at least. He pounces on Krista and rips out her neck.

Someone got a little carried away giving her a hickey.

Everyone scatters, and Alex catches up with the teacher. As do several of the ghosts. He can see them, and she can't, and there's some nice moments of Alex carrying on three conversations while the teacher looks MOST baffled.

Meanwhile, the Commandick finds the rest of the group, and picks off the two guys who are really only here to add to the body count.

Oh right, they have actually come up with a plan, and it involves getting some old gas cans out of storage, Krista's lighter, and basically making shit go boom from there.

It’s all fun and games until someone puts out a brain.

So, everyone runs around trying to get everything in place, the Richmandant shows up a few times to scare people, and eventually Alex starts making his way to the door that needs to be opened, so all the spirits can go free.

The movie pads things out by making Alex take the slowest walk ever, while Carolyn keeps the possessed brother distracted with her feminine wiles. And Jan does her best to El Kabong him with a piece of wood.

However, the commandant can sense Alex's journey, and starts slapping the wall to *hand waves* magically do stuff to try and stop the kid. It is terribly disconnected and not exactly what one would call a satisfying confrontation. The movie at least has the commandant’s true monstrous form to also try and stop Alex, but overall, it’s a bit weak for an ending.

I do love the two women just absolutely WAILING on the bad guy to stop him from waving his arms. Now that's some good stuff.

To keep this long story from getting any longer, Alex opens the door, the ladies set the bad guy on fire, but before he burns up for real this time, he grabs Carolyn and she goes up with him. Ah well.

Screw this, I’m gonna go bug those Winchester kids instead.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Pretty good looking, it’s nice and sharp. Vinegar Syndrome again doing a bang up job. If I had a complaint is that once they’re on the island, everything is all the same dark grey. Which makes sense for being night, in a prison, but the movie loses a lot of life, consequently.

Audio: Sounds good, and the music definitely shines, since it is a minor plot point.

Sound Bite: “That doesn't make any sense! A dead rock and roll star started all this?"

Body Count: This is a tough one to judge. It’s a small cast, and a lot of them are killed off, but it’s a long wait before that starts. There are a few corpses sprinkled in during dreams, but they’re dreams, and a lot of people we see the corpses of but not the death. This could have been a bit better.

1 - A whopping 43! minutes in before the kids discover a guard in a drum at Alcatraz.

2 - Richard dies off screen when he's possessed

3 - And then the possessed Richard kills his girlfriend

4 - Jack gets his neck snapped

5 - Marty gets his face punched through

6 - Carolyn burns in the church when it goes up.

7 - And the Commandant’s spirit goes with it.

Best Corpse: How often have we seen a fist punched right through a head? This and…Fetus, wasn’t it? Definitely worth noting.

Blood Type - B: A solid grade for the effects. There’s a decent amount of blood. The monster face on “Richard” is a nice look, if a bit vampire. Some surprising bits of chests being ripped open. Commandant’s Monster was a bit generic, but didn’t look bad.

Sex Appeal: Krista likes getting naked.

Drink Up! Every time the clouds roll in.

Movie Review: It’s a very well shot movie, but the plot is a bit messy. There are scenes that I feel should have been in the movie, that just weren’t. If you’re gonna drop the band’s ghosts in there, they should be a larger part, either before or after. I talked a bit about how unsatisfying the confrontation was, to have the Commandant just…slapping the wall to send tremors after Alex. But the acting is decent, the effects are noteworthy, and it all has a decent amount of charm to it. Three out of five ripped throats.

Entertainment Value: Is this movie actually three other movies stacked in a trenchcoat? Yes! Is the writing a bit dodgy and breezes past plot points? Also yes! Is it strangely paced with a kinda dull visual style in the back half? Sure is! But the effects are pretty cool, and it has a certain style to it that’s interesting. There’s a decent sense of humour to the characters, and they react fairly realistically to this situation, which is funny by how much NOPE everyone has. It has some big flaws, but the charm and fun carry it along, and it’s a good time, if not great. Three out of five shattered urns.