Review: Sledgehammer (1983)

Directed by: David A. Prior
Starring: Ted Prior, Tim Aguilar, Linda McGill
Written by: David A. Prior
Music by: Ted Prior, Marc Adams, Philip G. Slate
Country: United States
Available on: DVD (Intervision)
IMDb

Sledgehammer, the first slasher film made directly for the home video market, about college kids being murdered by a sledgehammer-wielding dude in a creepy plastic mask, sets expectations incredibly high right from the open. There’s a really killer and moody bit of score by Philip G. Slate that drones over the creative, spooky main titles. This sequence legit comprises two of the best minutes in all of horror — the music plays so well with the visuals, with their contrast jacked up to 11 and overlain with a primitive camcorder font. It feels homemade and fucking grimy, like something out of a serial killer’s personal collection of tapes he films of his victims in their final, fearful moments. But immediately afterwards, you’re treated to a very long 40-second shot of the exterior of a house in broad daylight and you realize, from there, it’s all a fiery nosedive into the earth from 50,000 feet. Forty of the next 45 minutes are dedicated to a topless and very chiseled Ted Prior either partying, lamenting his sad existence, or playing acoustic guitar, with no sledgehammer or horror to be found. You soon discover that that long shot of a house was a litmus test of your tolerance for the propensity of writer/director David A. Prior (Killer Workout, Raw Justice) to film the same stupid thing for incredibly long stretches. I felt like 5 minutes of my life were spent watching a man fumble with a cobweb-covered doorknob before he finally opened the door. Eventually, the movie gets back on track somewhat when the killer shows up and starts hammering some faces. But things never get as bloody as they should and, outside of some brain matter exposed during the very first kill, most of this stuff is surprisingly docile. But Ted Prior does punch a little kid in the face, so that’s something fun. The score as a whole is easily the best thing the movie has going for it, and it’s way better than it deserves. Unfortunately, Sledgehammer is all of the tedium and very little of the weirdness that’s common to SOV horror, which means it’s mostly a slog worth watching only for its historical significance.

Overall rating: 3 out of 10