The Prowler

A rejected soldier serving for his country against Hitler is sent a letter from his beloved Rosemary who informs him she could no longer wait and had met someone else. The soldier returns home, murders her when he finds her in the arms of another, and this death, during a graduation dance in '45, keeps college graduates from celebrating with such a dance for over three decades. It is '81, so the power to keep the dance from remaining banned no longer exists, the person responsible, Major Chatham (Lawrence Tierney, positively wasted in a nothing role), having endured a stroke, now wheelchair bound and mostly confined to home, looking out his window as the girls take part in putting the ceremony together. While the town's sheriff, George Fraser (Farley Granger, who really doesn't have much of a part, either, to tell you the truth, his role rather colorless and threadbare), goes on a fishing trip, his deputy, Mark (Christopher Goutman) in charge.

An old school method used in murder mysteries, gialli, and especially slashers, establishes, on an all-points bulletin, that a robbery/murderer is on the loose...and could be headed towards Mark and George's town. George, by tradition, doesn't miss this fishing summer trip, an annual deal, so he leaves Mark at the helm, certain the young man can handle things. But someone, the night of the dance, gears up in military uniform, boots, helmet, and weapons (including a bayonette and knife), ready to do some damage. Prom Night had used the same technique just a year prior with the escaped lunatic, so The Prowler incorporates the tactic into the plot as a means to give us a possible culprit in the ongoing series of murders. Probably knowing we wouldn't bite that unattractive bait, this is rather uninspired in its presentation, later put to rest when Mark mentions that the criminal was caught.

The whole point of burying sharp metal objects into human bodies is for effects guys to show off how good they are. Other effects guys would come after Tom Savini, but by this time in his career, he was the Master of Grisly, a made man who others idolized and placed on quite a pedestal. The Prowler was quite a platform for Savini, who only improves after each film, having built himself after Dawn of the Dead as the king in the make-up chair. In this film, Savini goes far beyond the gore pop we are accustomed to in a Friday the 13th film. When you see a knife slice a throat, the fucking camera holds on the blade as it moves back and forth, blood seeping from the freshly cut wound. The promiscuous babe who gets it in a pool while taking a swim? The bayonet is deep within the throat, blood red visibly establishing its presence in the water, the chick, mouth agape, gurgling, her legs bent, slowly succumbing to death. An adult in charge of keeping order in the dance gets a knife right into the neck, with us seeing her choking, and the camera holds in place as we see her struggle for air. Nothing compares to the pitchfork slow kill to the delicious little honey in the shower. She offers her beau shower sex, but before he can get his suit off, the prowler buries the bayonet into the top of his head. It isn't a five second stab,"move to the next scene" kill, either, but the prowler actually holds the blade in his head as the victim hemorrhages, the damn poor fellow's eyes turn white (it didn't make sense to me, but it sure leaves a creepy impression), a bit of jerking as a result. The babe in the shower doesn't get it any easier, as not only does the prowler impale her in the shower, we see her trying helplessly to stop him, showing the agony and torture as it plunges into her, crying out in vain.

There's no fun in the killing of these people, as when they die on screen we see the fight for life and the horror in dying. And because the gore is so realistic, I, for one, really cringed, often saying aloud, "Damn!" I didn't hate the characters, desire their demise, or wish for bad things to happen to them. I think that defines the differences in specific films and characters in the slasher genre. There are films with characters, barely defined past their certain stereotypical behaviors/actions, and stories, with screenplays designed just for them to show up, speak a little, and die. Then there are those who are preparing for a nice fun night prior to graduating college and moving on to a brand new life, unaware that there's this cold-blooded psycho suiting and weaponing up, getting ready to murder them horribly.

There's often a trigger that sets off the killing spree, and in this film it is the graduation dance that reawakens a dormant, "beast in the cellar", and the night it is revived, the killer reemerges to pick up where he left off decades ago. The dance hall is one of two settings of primary focus by those who wrote the script, the other being Major Chatham's home, which seems to be a location the killer is particularly interested in, preferably because Rosemary lived there. It was Rosemary's home and the killer has an obsessive link to her. To think, this all starts because of a dance.

I was annoyed by so little utilized of Tierney's time. Unless they only paid him about $50 bucks, his use was of little-to-no consequence in this movie, only grabbing the arm tightly of final girl, Vicky Dawson, as she tries to flee from Military Psycho. Why would he do that? He never utters a word and is barely hardly on screen for seconds, and his importance to the overall film is nil. Just a waste. The couple who go to neck in the basement of the dance is set up to die like most kids who make out in their car at the drive-in under a thunderstorm rain, but are rescued by the screenplay, only victim of the peeping lust of an old timer who seems to be key to the graduation ceremony's happening. The Carrie-inspired final scene, where Vicky goes to inspect her gal buddy's crime scene and is grabbed by her white-eyed boyfriend hanging from a necktie off the shower head is rather a spooky jolt but desperate (it almost felt like those who developed this did so out of a need to deliver a Jason-sprouting-from-the-bottom-of-Crystal-Lake kind of jump scare). The shot gun head explosion never gets old to me, so that was fab, but the reveal of who it is behind the prowler costume seemed a bit forced (it takes Granger several seconds just to pull the mask from his face), as if those involved with giving us the identity felt an obligation to tell us.

Let's get to the brass tacks of the matter...this movie perseveres with slasher fans because the violence leaves a lasting impact. Savini is the star. Director Zito tries his best to give the killer a backstory and explain to us why he's killing these kids. I think there's some post-production and script-to-screen deficiencies, but the movie lives and thrives on the ultra-violence. In that regard, The Prowler will maintain its place in the slasher hierarchy...