Graduation Day (1981)

Except for the fact Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't appear, this 1981 slasher follows the 80s teen slasher formula exactly — it could even be Scream -1 — opening on an initial tragedy at Woodsboro, I mean, Midvale High School that sets into motion a grisly series of killings of the members of the school's track-and-field team, and about the only thing that sets Graduation Day apart from the long line of identical others is a rocking film clip at the one-hour mark — Felony's Gangster Rock — which injects new energy — not a lot, but new — into the final thirty-minute lead-up to the clumsy reveal of The Fisherman, I mean, Ghostface, I mean...

★★☆☆☆

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Road Games (1981)

Patrick Quid (Stacy Keach), a truck driver transporting pig carcasses across the Nullabor Plain, repeatedly encounters on that long straight stretch of road through the Australian desert a green van, the driver of which he suspects is a serial killer, and Patrick supposes out loud to a hitchhiker he's picked up (Jamie Lee Curtis) that the killer thinks "women are pigs", a hint that there's an intellectual game happening in this horror thriller, but when all is said and done, the road games are just that: puns, wordplay and shallow tongue-in-cheek to while away time along the way.

★★★★☆

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Halloween II (1981)

You can nearly map the township of Haddonfield given the way the camera in Halloween II, like a before-its-time third-person sandbox computer game, follows behind people - the asylum escapee, masked lunatic Michael Myers, for example, or Donald Pleasence's psychiatrist (in not-so-hot pursuit of his patient) or random Haddonfield trick-or-treaters (including a very unfortunate someone who makes the mistake of way too quickly uptaking the latest halloween costume trend) - and as the camera follows these people around, around them the everyday of the town is revealed, its mundaneness in stark contrast with the serial killer's steady, bloody, inexplicable pursuit of Laurie which continues here immediately where the original movie left off: Laurie is taken to hospital after her climactic confrontation with Michael in number one (Jamie Lee Curtis pleads with doctors and nurses, "Don't put me to sleep," and then gets an injection that sends her to sleep for the whole movie); then there comes the beginning of an explanation for Michael Myers' pursuit of Laurie and the reason for his, um, resilience.

★★★☆☆

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Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

This sequel to 1980s Friday the 13th is just the first movie spat out again not a year later sans any creative effort, with a group of different-but-the-same teens heading out into the woods to train as camp counsellors unaware that it is camp counsellors the now adult Jason Voorhees blames for, um, well, not his drowning death - he's alive - and not the beheading of his mother - he dispenses with Alice in the opening Scream-inspiring scene - but because, well - who knows - he's just stomping flat-footed around the woods with nothing better or new or creative to do, maybe.

★☆☆☆☆

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The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)

The byline promises it, but not only did I not "feel the heat" or even vague chemistry between the leads, I even felt my body temperature drop a degree or two at the sight, at one point, of Jack Nicholson's pancake derriėre and at the film's persistence in showing over and over hands clawing at Jessica Lange's crotch, moments added, I suppose, along with Technicolour and a bewildering circus visit, to justify this remake of the 1946 James M Cain adaptation, but neither is a terrific film because no matter which way you tell it, at the heart of the story Cora and Frank's murder of Cora's husband, roadside-diner owner Nick, never feels remotely necessary.

★★☆☆☆

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The Howling (1981)

A newsreader's encounter with a serial killer traumatises her and drives her to the countryside where she encounters even more ghastliness in the form of werewolves, in this effective horror featuring several memorable 'transformations', Patrick Macnee loaning proceedings a The Avengers quirkiness, and a neat coming-together of plot threads making the newsreader's incredibly bad luck not so unbelievable.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Blow Out (1981)

A movie sound guy becomes an earwitness to the death of a US politician, and his sound recordings of the incident suggest an assassination, in Brian De Palma's classic but very ugly, masochistic thriller starring John Travolta.

★★★★☆

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Excalibur (1981)

This fantasy adventure tells the story of King Arthur (and Merlin, Camelot, the Lady of the Lake, Sir Gawain, Morgana, and the Knights of the Round Table...) and is much more captivating on its 1981 film budget than more recent sfx-driven Hollywood extravaganzas, helped enormously by its being studded with big-name British superstars-in-the-making like Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson, who all loan a Shakespearean weight to proceedings.

★★★★☆

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Heavy Metal (1981)

This instantly repulsive but ultimately captivating animation, clearly the work of an all-male team of animators having a hoot, features copious amounts of sex and violence in an oddball collection of stories about a strange glowing ball that terrorises a young woman.

★★★★☆

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