BAD MOVIE REVIEW: Bloody Birthday (1981)

On the day of my 24th birthday I sought to find a special horror movie to exemplify my special day.  Fortunately I had purchased that such film months ago and it had been sitting on my shelf quietly waiting for the right time to be put in my DVD player and to be watched in all of its glory.  That movie is Bloody Birthday.  Only having heard some mild commentary on the film I gave it a shot anyway.  I couldn't have asked for a better present to myself.

Although Bloody Birthday was made in the early 80's, it has that gritty 70's style grindhouse feel to it.  The sex and nudity runs rampent, the violence is explosive, and the premise...is awesomely awful.  So basically these 3 little bastards are born all at the same time during an eclipse which happens to block out saturn...the planet of emotions.  These children are apparently effected and have complete disregard for emotions and on the eve of their 10th birthday go on a wonderful killing spree.  Of course nobody suspects the little shits since they're kids and who in all honesty thinks 10 year olds needlessly kill people.

The thing I enjoyed most was the mindlessness of it all.  It seemed they wrote it in pieces then strung it together.  I can just imagine the chalkboard (I'm sure they didn't have any dry erase boards back then) and they wrote down cool ideas for killing people...arrows through a peephole, little kid with a hand gun, broken necks, that kind of thing.  Then they discovered that little kids can be creepy so they make their killers some group of kids.  And finally to give them a reason or purpose (perhaps as some last resort effort) they come up with the genius idea that they have no emotions as the result of an eclipse.  I love it.

The film itself isn't very scary.  It plays off as a classic slasher film.  It's hilarious at times and actually quite entertaining.  I found myself cheering more than a few times to "Kill that bitch!" or "YEAH!!!"  The effects were decent and the acting wasn't too bad.  I had to give it to them kids, they played their roles quite perfectly.  Of course they made some fatal errors and put themselves in a position that they had to "off" some people to keep their secret safe, but their stupid kids.  You can hardly blame them for their inferior murdering abilities.

In any case, its a great movie for a bad movie night.  It's an even better movie for a Birthday bad movie night.  It's nothing that would ever receive national acceptance, but for me its definitely a cult favorite.  I say watch it and judge for yourself.