Sledgehammer (1983)

Sledgehammer (1983)1/2 (out of 4) A young boy is being abused by his mother so he brutally kills her and her boyfriend with (you guessed it) a sledgehammer. Ten years later a group of adults show up at the same house and soon start to get picked off.Director David A. Prior's SLEDGEHAMMER deserves some credit for being the first shot on video slasher film but sadly there really isn't too many good things to say about it. I guess you can give the film credit for being the first of something but sadly the entire film is just one giant mess of a picture with very little going for it. As you'd expect, there are countless technical issues, the performances are horrid and there's one thing that makes the film almost painfully unbearable to sit through.What is that? The film clocks in at 84-minutes and the reason it runs that long is that so much of it was shot in slow motion. This here is what really kills anything decent in the film because scenes just drag on for no reason what-so-ever. I mean, I understand using slow motion at times but when there's this much of it you just want to claw your eyes out. Even worse is that a lot of scenes drag on for no reason at all. For an example, the opening shot of the house. In most movies it would last a second or two but here it must drag on for thirty seconds and for no reason! As I said, that there makes SLEDGEHAMMER impossible to enjoy and it's rather painful to have to sit through. I will say that the death scenes were creative enough for such a low-budget movie and there was one creative shot through the killer's eyes. Sadly that's about all this film has going for it but you have to give credit to Prior for making his own film and this helped give a rather long career off the ground.

"Sledgehammer" is another one of those forgotten 80's slashers and yes this one isn't less cheesy than the others and okay it's not perfect or great but what I found is that this movie was quite fun and has heart, which is very much rare these days.The beginning kept me interested where we have a small boy cruelly locked in a cupboard by his mother so she can carry on with her lover and then things get out of hand and the boy finds a sledgehammer and dispatches his mother and her lover. This yes was predictable but really set the tone for this movie and what's to come. Then fast forward 10 years and we get a group of 30 year old teenagers partying at that same house and well you know what's gonna happen next.Sledgehammer doesn't rank as one of the finest slasher movies from this period there are quite a lot of flaws, but despite that this movie is a lot of fun, the killer is very menacing and creepy and the kills are quite effective despite lacklustre effects. The setting itself was rather dull and tame, too much white and made this movie look dull and this movie holds the distinction for being the first shot on video slasher and it shows, like the shaky camera work and the supernatural angle just didn't work for me and the slow motion scenes were pretty annoying and overused. But despite these flaws "Sledgehammer" does deliver entertainment in some departments, the acting was pretty bad but I've seen a lot worse, they were still quite likable and the party scenes were quite fun and when the killer shows up ready to dispatch the cast, these scenes are quite tense as the killer does seem quite impossible to get away from as he's literally everywhere which was a definite highlight. All in all Sledgehammers is by no means memorable or a cult classic, but a competent effort dripped in pure cheese and definitely a guilty pleasure.

This is a homemade 80's slasher film that appears to have cost about 14 bucks to make and looks like it was shot on a VHS camcorder (I'm not kidding). It was shown at a theater in L.A. recently as part of a homemade horror video festival and I still can't get it out of my mind. The film begins with an abused child being locked in a closet while his mother has a drunken fling with a character referred to in the credits as the "Lover". Before the affair can commence a giant masked maniac armed with a sledgehammer beats them to a bloody pulp. A title card (old ass 80's camcorder text) tells us it's 10 years later and we are introduced to seven potential victims as they go for a weekend retreat in the home of the previous murders where they are systematically stalked and killed by the same sledge wielding madman. OK, I know it all sounds very derivative and there are much better, more professional cheap ass slashers out there, but this movie is "special" in a lot of ways. First off, the low production value and it's cheap, home video quality cinematography actually enhance the film a lot. That combined with a simple, yet effective, bass heavy synthesizer score, an amateur cast made up of muscle bound jocks and big hair bimbos, and a freakishly tall killer who wears a clear plastic mask and is genuinely creepy looking make this movie transcend into a weird kinda art piece. It's like if Pinter made a slasher movie at a friends house one weekend for beer money on his home video camera. There is also an unexplained paranormal bit where the killer can physically change back into the small child from the beginning so I assume the kid is the killer and he's a shape shifter. Huh!? This effect is handled with an old fashioned dissolve. There is a completely inappropriate food fight that is extended for so long it becomes almost disturbing on a sociological level. The killer is SO big he barely clears the hallway's ceiling as he chases a victim and he holds his sledgehammer in one hand the way most normal people hold a regular hammer. Freaky. This whole films visual style is unnerving and escalates it into something much more than what was probably intended. David Lynch meets The Slumber Party Massacre. If you can get a bootleg dub somewhere, get high and drunk with as many friends you can find and toss it on the old VCR. The 80's never seemed stranger.

I am a fond lover of the horrible straight to video shot on camera horror movies of the eighties but this one was just UNWATCHABLE. Well first it starts off with this mother locking her son in the closet so she and this guy can do the naughty but I guess as any normal person would the kid does not like this and comes out and kills his mother and his mothers "friend". Well over the next years a group moves in and...you can pretty much guess what happens later on....the son is somewhat older and kills the people off. The worst thing about this movie is that the director shows the same scene for a good 10 minutes and it gets just a tad bit boring. This is the same director that made the awesome "Killer Workout" so I cant call this movie a complete waste of time but I know for sure I won't take another hour or so to watch it again. This movie makes bad movies we love horrible. 3 out of 10