1981 was the year the slasher film firmly established itself as a horror genre. Friday the 13th part II introduced us to an adult Jason Voorheese. We also had “The Burning” and “My Bloody Valentine” and tonight’s horror movie “The Prowler”. While The Burning aimed for the Friday the 13th style holiday camp bloodbath, The Prowler followed in the wake of “Prom Night” (1980) by targeting a small town graduation dance. The movie is directed by Joseph Zito, who would go on to direct Friday the 13th Part IV (The one where Jason actually gets killed). Neal Barbera and Glenn Leopold write, João Fernandes provides cinematography, Richard Einhorn provides the music and Tom Savini does the effects.
In 1945 the town of Avalon is shaken by the brutal murder of a pair of lovers at a graduation dance. The victims are impaled with a pitch fork and decorated with a single rose. In the aftermath it is decided to no longer hold graduation dances. This lasts for 35 years until the community is finally convinced to let the dance happen. Unfortunately for the celebrating school leavers, someone is not happy about this turn of events. While embarking on a killing spree following the original killers M.O. one of his potential victims manages to escape and sound the alarm bell. The police deputy, who is left in command after the Sheriff goes on a fishing trip must track down and stop this Prowler before he takes another victim.
Some People Take Rejection Badly
This is a fairly early slasher film (At least if you ignore proto-slashers like “Bay of Blood“). Because of this, it’s hard to appreciate the impact this film would have had on release. A lot of the slasher tropes in this film were still relatively fresh. The effects for the kills would have been especially impressive. Thanks to the great work of Tom Savini, those effects actually hold up pretty well by modern standards too. The movie has a moderately low kill count. Six stalked kills by the psycho (All coming in pairs), with the first pair being decades earlier. This is followed by two more during the struggle at the end, both shot. These are fairly evenly spaced out maintaining the pace and tension.
The plot though is a little weak and somewhat muddled. There’s never any explanation given for why the killer is the killer. It’s implied his first kills are because he was jilted while fighting in WW2. This new spree though seems to be simply from a hatred of proms. This is a remarkable level of hatred towards the idea of young lovers. Even 35 years after his heart was broken and despite having apparently had a fairly normal life, he is still so enraged by the graduation ball that he wants to slaughter a load of random kids. It’s a hard one to buy. He deliberately avoids killing his work colleague though, so he’s not purely psychotic. It’s definitely odd.
What The Fork?
There’s a lot of unanswered questions that come with his movie. The most obvious one is why a pitchfork? The only answer I can think of is simple because they thought it was a cool. That and it would help the killer stand out. He uses a bayonette just as often and that one makes more sense given the WW2 soldier gimmick. On top of this there is a lot of oddness that seems to me to be attempts to throw red herrings our way about the identity of the killer. But these are all very ineffective and just end up throwing random things into the story. For example the whole Major Chatham red herring.
Had he turned near the end in place of the random character that does, it would have tied this up nicely. Instead we get a whole scene with a Major Chatham watching two of the lovers from the prom get it on in a basement. I can’t help but the film’s makers were really certain the viewers would think Chatham was the killer. Even despite being very old and frail and obviously not his own daughters jilted lover. His entire role in the film ends up just being that of a peeping tom. Apparently that’s more important to him than finding out who killed his daughter. It’s even stranger when you remember that it was meant to be Chatham that stopped the school having a prom for so many years. Seems like he enjoys it plenty.
Conclusion
One final bit of weirdness with the film is at the end. After a rescue moment with the final girl (Trying to avoid spoilers here). The girl and her somewhat random rescuer spend a lot of time staring at each other while dramatic music plays. The scene is awkward to watch. Perhaps this is the effect of having seen so many slasher movies. Obviously I knew the killer wasn’t finished off yet. The pair silently stare at each other for what feels like forever, while the girl makes a variety of facial expressions and then… well, you can probably guess. It’s a slasher film after all. This was just a bad scene and a shame because the final act had been pretty solid until then.
So overall, I did quite like this slasher. Tom Savini needs a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. He’s raises the level of any horror film he does the effects for and this is no exception. The plot though is all over the place, but the pacing is at least good. The film only started to drag once (When the Deputy is trying to get a lazy motel worker to contact the vacationing Sheriff). The killer is still pretty original, even 44 years later even we still don’t know why he used a pitch fork. Overall, this is a solid 6/10. Not a universal recommendation though. Instead it’s a strong recommendation for slasher fans and a “Don’t go out of your way for it” for everyone else.