Bloody Birthday - Can Children be Slashers?

If your looking for cult favorite movies, check out TCM Underground on Saturdays at 2 AM. TCM compliments the main feature with a similar film, making it an awesome double feature. Most of the time, the movies are pretty campy, but they have some gems like Blue Velvet or Faster Pussy Cat, Kill, Kill! What I love about TCM is that they have no commercial breaks and they don't censor their film. So if you like to stay up late watching movies into the wee morning of a Friday night, always have this time block DVR'd just in case so you don't miss out on the fun. Checkout the TCM Underground schedule at http://www.tcm.com/underground/index.jsp

So this week's main feature on Underground was Bloody Birthday. Directed by Ed Hunt in 1981, this movie is your typical slasher, except your serial killer isn't a massive hulkling wearing a hockey mask. Instead, it's three 10-year old kids recking havoc across town. Basically, 2 boys and 1 girl were all born at the same time during a total eclipse. According to astrology, if born during this occurrence, you grow up with no morals and heartlessly kill people. So the "terrible threesome" end up being best of friends, and start off by killing a teenage couple who were making out in a graveyard (Note: It's never smart to fool around in a cemetery, much less an empty grave). And like a domino effect, they start killing off anyone who gets in their way.

Like any slasher, there is plenty of nudity, where the evil girl sells "quarter peep shows" to the elementary boys so they can watch her older sister change clothes. You also have your surprise scares with a strangling or an arrow to the head. However, this slasher is not scared to have cold-blooded murder in the middle of the day. For example, one of the boys is running around with a hand gun and shoots down a teacher who is going to assign homework during their big birthday party. This was obviously before Columbine, as you're allowed to have toy pistols at school, but the movie does not allow the death of any kid below the age of high-school.

Not the best movie in the world, but a watchable and entertaining slasher. Not that I'm a Bona Fide film critic, but I want to start rating movies based upon personal re-watch-ability and enjoyability.

So until I think of a Tarantino Comics themed substitute for a "rating system," I give Bloody Birthday - 3 out of 5 stars.