Slashers (2001)

Director: Maurice Devereaux

Screenplay: Maurice Devereaux

Cast: Sarah Joslyn Crowder as Megan Lowry; Tony Curtis Blondell as Devon White; Kieran Keller as Michael Gibbons; Jerry Sprio as Rick Fisher; Carolina Pla as Rebecca Galley; Sofia de Medeiros as Brenda Thompson; Claudine Shiraishi as Miho Taguchi; Christopher Piggins as Doctor Ripper; Neil Napier as Chainsaw Charlie / Preacherman; Takaaki Honda as The Announcer / Hideo; Koichi Yano as The Technician

A Night of a Thousand Horror Movies #153

Slashers has been a film I have been interested in since I really ever got into cinema, ten years plus at least for this intriguing premise of a television show about surviving killers. It aptly fits within a period of horror cinema which were keeping their eyes peeled to the growth of reality television. Kolobos (1999), My Little Eye (2002), (which in the early era of DVD had an alternative version where you could change the camera angles with the remote), even Halloween: Resurrection (2002), which was not held as a good film in the slightest but still tried to continue the franchise through reality television tropes. Not a horror film, but worth bringing up to compare Slashers to, is Series 7: The Contenders (2001), in which they are both fictional television shows where the competitors can die. Series 7, in which its cast were chosen by lottery against their will to enter a competition to kill each other, was shot and edited like actual episodes of the show. Slashers, set here as a single episode of a Japanese game show, has willing participants playing for a cash sum where, in the vague premise, you have to survive against three killers or try to kill them if you can for extra money.

Immediately, whilst I will be very positive about Slashers as an idiosyncratic take on slasher film clichés, I will be upfront that the setting has dated and problematic depending on how you view it. Contextually it falls into the exoticisation of Japan as a culture of the perverse and weird, which cannot helped but be noticed in its premise inherently. Japanese game shows can be weird and very painful to their participants, which is something worthy of parodying. I grew up with a repackaged version of Takashi's Castle, when Takashi Kitano wasn't a legendary director/actor but a popular comedian who hosted this show, where just the skipping stones game, with rocks on a pond which occasionally sunk when stood on, could be painful to witness for the competitors who failed. (I also vividly remember clips of another involving inappropriate use of a cactus or two, but sadly, I cannot provide a good enough memory for citation). Providing examples like this does not help still in this one creative choice of Slashers I have reservations of, which really could have been avoided with some tweaks beyond surface aesthetic. This is sad as the film does at least have the decency to cast Japanese actors, who speak in Japanese with onscreen subtitles unless necessary, as this is the first American broadcast which has American participants in the game, a plot in itself that could have negated this issue for myself is we emphasised (even off-screen) how the duplicitous nature of this show is international.

Slashers gets more weight and redeems itself, building up this world in a limited budget first before playing out this game. From the female host in elaborate costumes to their own in-house DJ, the setting works even with the concern I have made. It also has the perfect touch of there being an unseen camera man whose eye is what we see through entirely, not having to worry about being chased or any scenario where it is questionable why he would still be filming as, with even the killers wearing electronic collars, no one is allowed to interfere with his work. The film itself is the entire episode in its entirety.

Its biggest virtue is that this is a subversion of slasher films. It is signalled early on by one female character, a young woman wanting to make a political message, being toyed with by a killer by having her top ripped off, which comes off as lurid until immediately afterwards you realise this is because a) the killer in question Dr. Ripper is a pervert too, and b) the game show is deliberately pacifying its viewers with sex and violence, where another character realises she could survive longer if she strips down to her bra and increase her betting chances. Throughout Slashers the game show, talked of by an ex-soldier who has watched it and knows the rules, it shows itself to be a manipulative programme which forces out the luridness, even having a sex room with a bed where cast can win free time to be safe if they have sex on camera. They are even prompted to explain their back story to add to the experience for viewers. Beyond the environments being designed to separate the players or trap them, Slashers to its credit goes further in mocking the genre, where even the trope of the music becoming more tense for the viewer is talked of, and that the DJ is tirelessly working and is heart by the players in the midst of this to cause them paranoia and panic.

The production value is also perfect, low budget but befitting a fake TV show that has to watch its budget and bear in mind the blood has to be cleaned up. It is a compliment that, if I could have walked on these sets, I would be happy. From creepy clown rooms, to a literal dungeon or a corridor of horror icons, or the main area which looks like a warzone set for a paintball game, the look of Slashers in terms of the sets fit, This is especially as some, like the room all in black with the photos of previously killed players, are as meant to cause psychological effect as they can have actual pits of spikes over a rickety bridge or provide improvised weapons.

The acting, in truth, is shaky. Everyone tries his or her hardest, but almost all the cast never made a film afterwards. The exception, who has appeared in many usually as an extra but has had a healthy career, is Neil Napier who plays two of the killers, the psychotic Preacherman and Chainsaw Charlie, who is providing one of the best performances in both roles. He even gets one of the best scenes, in which in account to those electric collars the cast are frozen in the spot when there is a commercial break, forcing them to interact and even leading to periods of breaking character and arguing as happens with the Chainsaw Charlie figure over the rickety bridge. The tension that scene, where no one can kill each other and a debate of their existence happens, is something you would not have in a Friday the 13th film but is fascinating here.

Details like this are what I like immensely about the film. It still plays with slasher tropes and there are some dark aspects to it - such as a warning to some viewers that there is an attempt sexual assault - but it also toys with them, prodding many which have been pushing me at arms distance from appreciating it as a horror sub-genre. Even when it becomes obvious one of the characters is a bit of a psychopath himself, Slashers' structure is able to turn this on its head too. It overcomes a lot of its limitations by being clever with the structure, far more interesting by deliberately subverting slashers as artifice than Wes Craven's Scream (1996) trying to question them in a normal plot. It was a pleasure. A grim one at times, but never tasteless, the material finding the right balance and succeeding more than my initial interest over the years would have expected.