A rare little film indeed which was hardly released in its day has been revived thanks to the modern technology of DVD. Luckily discs are much cheaper to produce than VHS tapes; otherwise this film might have stayed by the wayside forever. Bloody Movie tries to do all it can to add originality and pizzazz into a formulaic slasher film. If you can forgive the film’s shortfalls in coherency and just enjoy the bloodlust and idiotic victims who don’t even give the killer any challenge who fall one by one, you will be entertained for 90 minutes.
Bloody Movie was originally released in 1987 as Terror Night. There is plenty of archive footage from the silent movie era in this film, as the story concerns Lance Hayward (John Ireland) famous star of the silent period that disappeared without a trace sometime after the coming of talkies. His old house is about to be demolished and a bunch of teens decide to spend the night in his old estate before it is no more. It seems that the teens are not the only ones to be savoring the final moments of Hayward’s house as a mysterious killer picks them off one by one, masquerading as famous characters played by Hayward. At the time of each individual murder, the film inter-cuts archive footage from real silent films with the murder currently taking place. Could it be possible that Lance Haywood is still alive? Or is it the work of a clever copycat killer?
The copyright issue of the borrowed footage could have been one of the reasons that this film never saw the light of day until now. Standard story does stay entertaining for the first 70 minutes or so, and then it just continues on for the sake of it. The earlier scenes could have been lengthened a little to stretch out the running time, rather than force the film to end long after what could have been the logical conclusion. The film stars many once famous film and TV stars in small cameo roles such as Aldo Ray, Alan Hale and Dan Haggerty and was rumored to have been co-directed by the legendary Andre De Toth. The actors who portray the teens are all forgettable faces with the exception of the one and only, porn starlet Jamie Summers (billed under her birth name Denise Stafford) in a rare legit film appearance, actually shows that she had tremendous ‘scream queen’ potential if she had of chosen that route. Michelle Bauer also shows up as in a gratuitously, unfettered breasted appearance.
The film is inventive even if the direction is a little uninspiring, using the great silent film star mythology to earn well deserved scares. Bloody Movie definitely will not disappoint in the gore magnitude, however I much prefer the original title to this one. The marketing seems to be poor for this DVD and to add to that, it only has a film trailer as a bonus and nothing else, which is a little irritating.
