Review: The Slayer (1982)

Directed by: J.S. Cardone
Starring: Sarah Kendall, Frederick Flynn, Carol Kottenbrook
Written by: J.S. Cardone, William R. Ewing
Music by: Robert Folk
Country: United States
Available on: Blu-ray (Arrow)
IMDb

Writer/director J.S. Cardone’s supernaturally tinged flick The Slayer combines two of my favorite little nooks of the genre: golden age slashers and seaside horror. Kay (Sarah Kendall, all wild-eyed and twitchy), an artist afflicted by increasingly vivid nightmares featuring the violent deaths of her family and friends, decides to take a vacation with her husband, her brother, and his wife to a little island off the Atlantic coast. Turns out the place is abandoned and mostly dilapidated, and they’re stranded there for a few days thanks to an incoming hurricane — and they may not be as alone as they thought.

Though this is Cardone’s debut feature (he’d go on to have a fairly solid career that includes writing and directing the severely under-loved Shadowzone), it’s a pretty confidently if modestly composed bit of slasher tastiness. Somehow, The Slayer ended up on the list of the United Kingdom’s “video nasties” in the ‘80s. There are only six total cast members (not considering a tacked-on epilogue), so the on-screen deaths are pretty limited and aren’t overly gruesome, even though each is staged well. I can’t recall a single curse word and any nudity or sexual content is implied. Basically, the Brits had no idea what the hell they were talking about at this point in their witch hunt.

Because there are so few characters (all of whom are well-acted but underdeveloped), and thus very little actual slaying, the film relies heavily on its surreal atmospherics, which are moody as fuck. A small, desolate locale eroded by constant sea spray is gonna do it for me every time. This is a sopping wet movie, dank to its bones with slashing rain, the ghostly wails of hurricane winds, shrill bursts of lightning, and beaches dotted by the sodden corpses of long-forsaken structures and wan flora. Robert Folk’s traditional but effective score adds requisite flares of aural terror. Borrowing from the best haunted house films, Cardone allows his characters to slowly, nearly languidly, roam the darkest, creepiest corners of the island and their vacation house before meeting their doom at the hands of … well, who knows?

Initially, The Slayer is framed like a typical slasher flick. The plot sets up their pilot, Marsh, as the potential murderer, but to what end? Kay’s nightmares are plagued by an enigmatic monster — and the marketing materials definitely lean into this — but that seems like a metaphor, right? Is sleep-deprived, anxiety-crushed Kay actually slaughtering her loved ones as part of a fugue state? Cardone leaves behind a murky stew of vagueries that can be a little frustrating. There’s definitely a surprising and effectively grotesque creature that makes a brief appearance — presumably the titular slayer — but by that point, Kay hasn’t slept in days, subsisting solely on cigarettes and coffee, so she might be hallucinating that shit. The epilogue, which was apparently concocted as an afterthought, further muddies the waters by suggesting everything that happened was a premonition of horrors yet to occur.

But if you don’t spend too much time overthinking what’s real and what’s not, demanding slavish adherence to trope, or longing for more screen time for what’s actually a pretty terrific ghoul, you’re likely to find The Slayer is a rewarding film that artfully and skillfully maintains an eerie ambience not usually found in the slasher subgenre.

Overall rating: 7.5 out of 10