Scalps (1983)
Director: Fred Olen Ray
Where to get it: IMAGE Entertainment
One of the most notorious, widely censored horror films of all time! Impending doom is in store for a group of college students digging in a cursed Indian burial ground, where an evil spirit lies in wait to possess the living and cut a bloody swath of vengeance across the land! In the harrowing tradition of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this widely suppressed, gruesome tale features gritty, outrageous gore effects and is now presented in all its graphic splendor.
In it’s current state, Scalps, is a bit of a mess. That’s not just my words. On the film’s commentary the men behind the movie watch in terror and shock as they see the unwanted edits the company made without their input. Cuts and edits that are including, but not limited to, showing you who’s going to die and how they die about a good twenty or thirty minutes before that happens. It also used random shots of of outtakes just because they didn’t want to wait for the slow building nature that the film was intended to be. And to be honest, watching the film with that commentary turned on may be much more enjoyable than watching the film straight up. There’s not much excitement when a group of college kids avoid all warning (one by a very by the book Indian they run into) and head into the desert to dig where they shouldn’t.
But the movie does give us some nice gore in spots. It’s not pretty, due to the fact that the negatives and masters seem to be missing for most the really gory stuff. But for 1983 it’s not that bad. Does it rival those other great slashers of the time and the classic that came out in years like 1981? Nope, not really. But it has it’s charm, mostly due to just how bad it comes across and how much of a mess it appears to be. Points could be given however for the pure fact that they at least tried to make each character seem different and not cookie cutter. The characters may be typical for the decade, but they do have their own thing. That beats the massive amounts of movies where everyone pretty much acted the same. So, you get good gore in spots and you get some interesting (be it somewhat annoying at times) characters. But the film is clearly edited by someone with ADD and as a result it kills the drama and the build, just resulting in humor due to the confusion.
(5/10)
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