Scalps (1983)

So, it's about six people where they go to the Californian wasteland to dig up around in an Indian burial ground for artifacts, and then they unleash the evil spirit. The spirit possesses one of the group and begins slaughtering them one by one. The plot sounds similar to The Evil Dead, right? It also reminded me on The Hills Have Eyes because of the location. Since The Evil Dead is successful low-budget horror film and well done, but is Scalps also good? No, it's not at all! It has a bad editing, ugly cinematography, terrible makeup, bad acting and ridiculously bad dialogues and lines. I didn't care for any character, they weren't memorable. I liked the ending though, it was a bit creepy. The plot is interesting, but this movie could have been MUCH better.I'm fine with it that it's really a bad movie, but it's somehow enjoyable and I could give it a 5/10, but it's way slow for filming while driving etc., so I gave it a 4/10.

I think I've got Fred Olen Ray's schtick down now. After watching however so many of his movies, I think this is his approach: to take a completely trite excuse for a story that anyone who has ever seen a horror movie could recite in their sleep and then suck it of any of the life and possibility of interest it ever could have had. His movies are usually short, barely clocking in at over an hour, and that entire first hour will be "characters" wandering around doing absolutely nothing of interest and certainly nothing that will invest them with a personality, or give you any reason whatsoever to care about them at all. After he has lulled you to sleep better than your grandmother could when you were six months old, he'll start deploying with the actual "horror" movie stuff, ie. gore, but as I said, you'll be asleep or perhaps even comatose by this point.In the first hour of a Fred Olen Ray movie, he carefully constructs as many barriers between you and caring about his movie as he can. In the last ten or fifteen minutes, he throws the things you probably watched the movie hoping to see at you, ie. the blood and guts, but you probably gave up at barrier 3 or 4 and have long since stopped paying attention to the movie and started doing something else."Scalps" has a few extra barriers between you and it, aside from its most sturdy, ie. the tedium of it. These are the picture quality and the sound. The movie looks like it was filmed through mud. You can barely make out what you are seeing, anyway, so even if it wasn't boring and pointless, you wouldn't be able to see it.The sound was obviously all recorded in post production, making it stick out like a sore thumb and sound entirely unnatural and distracting throughout the entire movie. It makes you want to watch the characters lips at the beginning at least, knowing it's probably totally out of sync, but then you realise that you can't really see their lips - remember? The movie was filmed through mud.The plot is something to do with college students (I guess) going to stay in an Indian burial ground. They wander around doing nothing and saying nothing of interest for an hour until they are killed in a variety of admittedly gruesome ways. One is clubbed from behind by something that looks like a topless Dame Edna Everidge. In the movie's most noteworthy scene of violence, a woman is, indeed, actually scalped, so at least there was a reason for the title other than the racist exploitation of Native American myths the movie engages in.The scalping scene may not look all that realistic, but it must have cost some actual money. If they could afford to do that, why couldn't they have come up with a plot for this mess, a boom mic, and a camera lens that wasn't covered in sludge?

this was a rather spooky and chilling movie that had several effective jump at you moments.I know what other people say about the films lack of credible elements but let me tell you one thing.When I was watching this real late at night on my portable DVD player with headphones on this movie had such an otherworldly feel to it it actually made my heart jump and beat quick at times.With the headphones on volume cranked up to blasting level,the superbly atmospheric music and super atmospheric locations went straight through my ears and I could'nt always pay attention to what was going on since there was some scenes that dragged on with nothing happening but i'll never forget how that music actually gave my heart a cold feeling.Something I don't get from a lot of well known horror movies I've seen over the years.As people will gripe ab out the inconsistent editing job I think it gives a movie an unpredictability that you can' t always tell whats gonna happen in the next scene or cut.Tfis is far from academy award-winning material but serves it's purpose well for a low-budget atmospheric horror premise.And it was'nt all about another cardboard masked serial killer going around and axing up the prom party teens as this one offered creepy otherworldly feeling locations and the killer is not human and comes from a stone that possesses them them turns them into actual mystical creatures and it actually shows one of the teens transforming into it as it passes around each person.Even if it is all undoubtedly fake I will give it a high rating in part due to the type of slasher premise and gruesome,effective shots but most of all what hooked me in the film was the music and locations mixing together.

I had always heard about Scalps as people say it's Fred Olen Ray's best horror flick. Well if this is his best, I'd hate to see the rest! The film starts off a little dull, but starts to get better as the group make their way into the mountains. The atmosphere is quite creepy in a low-budget kind of way and reminded me slightly of The Evil Dead, plus the location is similar to The Hills Have Eyes. I love the shot of the rotting skeleton when the car goes past, but no one sees it.Once they have set up camp, the group hear mysterious drumming, see strange faces in campfires, and so on. There are some hilarious lines such as "I broke a fingernail!", and also when the girl says that the drumming is coming from hell. The scalping scene is probably the highlight of the film, and is brilliantly done - it really surprised me. When the girls throat is cut, she writhes around in agony and it looks realistic. Also the part where he removes her scalp is really cool. There's another good gore scene when a mans head is chopped off, but it's not quite as impressive.Overall, Scalps is worth a watch if you can tolerate low budget horror. It's nothing amazing, but does have a low budget charm about it.