Sledgehammer (1983) on Joe Bob's Last Drive-In

 I believe this Joe Bob and Darcy, the Mail Girl, mentioned that the Shot-On-Video duo of Sledgehammer (1983) and Things (1989) was the final double-episode of the 3rd season. Gosh, it sadly feels like it was just Mother's Day (1980) last week. I hate that my Friday Night Fix of Joe Bob will not be there for probably six or so months. I have to admit that SOV is really not my thing. That is not to say that I look down on anyone who finds great enjoyment in this kind of filmmaking so prevalent especially in the 80s. Like Joe Bob said, as a cultural 80s artifact, these films deserve to survive and be enjoyed if their audience loves to watch them. I looked at my review for Boardinghouse (1982) and want to post it in a separate blog thread for posterity because I thought I was mean, condescending, and snobby about the genre and film. It is important that I keep a record of who I was then and who I am now. The blog sort of preserves all that like a diary, I guess.

If I'm honest I thought Sledgehammer was a bad film. I'm not going to bash the Priors as inept in direction or acting, the brother team really hoping to make their mark in the industry. Prior had his action film aspirations but a lot of folks without that "in card" into the industry but want so badly to make films go for the horror genre as a start. David made a hell of a lot of films in his career before passing away in 2015. You have to start somewhere. He made low budget films his whole career, never really getting that big A budget actioner he might have desired. Still, he worked with a lot of folks, like David Carradine and Jan Michael-Vincent, even Pamela Anderson. 

Shooting his first film at an apartment in Venice Beach with a cast of mostly folks who would never be in another film -- or appear in one or two more at the least besides brother, Ted -- David Prior has this long static shot of a house, lengthy opening and closing credits, slow motion scenes of action (he uses A LOT a slow motion), the camera quality is just less than ideal, the plot features a boy treated horribly by his mother when she wanted to fuck a lover (murdering them both with the titular sledgehammer) showing up as a being with a knife alternating with this really tall and lurking man in a plastic mask who is far more menacing, and there are these patches of prolonged scenes (like a food fight, romantic walks, unpacking a van, lingering shot of a locked door) with some rather rough dialogue and acting. It isn't that I don't think they tried or didn't care. I think they all wanted this to be good. But when Ted Prior goes to punch the kid with the plastic mask in the face, pulls back a hurt hand, and is himself knocked back by the kid with a hand to the face (!) I couldn't help but laugh. There is this one shot, though, I really liked where the tall killer is walking much like Dick Warlock's Michael Myers from Halloween II down the stairs towards one of the remaining women survivors as she trips and tries to avoid his swinging sledgehammer...I think the low quality camera does work for that one scene. All the food stuff is not to my taste -- I just don't like gorging or vomiting -- but I did appreciate one special effects sequence where a knife is put through a victim's throat (the typical goof who loves pranks like freaking a young woman by pretending to hang himself in a shower or playing a recording with weird sounds during Ted's boogeyman story) and the killer drags him by the knife across a room (ultimately into a closet). 

I do try to find the good even in the worst of movies. I did that here. It was not easy. I won't lie: this could be a slog. Again, though, I'm not the audience for this kind of film. As close as I came to liking one of these SOV horror films was the Video Violence double feature. Even these had their struggled but they were devious and nasty enough to appreciate. And the video store featured was a fun trip back in time for me.

From a technical standpoint, the film is probably a 1.5/5. But I get why Sledgehammer is beloved by the genre's specific audience. There are multiple scenes where the tall killer is "injured" and keeps coming. Like a hatchet to his chest, an electrocution through a "shocking" door knob, a sledgehammer to the face (cool POV through the mask for that one), sledgehammer to the chest, neck twist/snap, and other sledgehammer related activities featuring injury to the killer and victims.