1983
Directed by
John M. Grissmer
Written by
Bruce Rubin (as Richard Lamden)
Cast
Louise Lasser .... Maddy
Mark Soper .... Todd/Terry
Marianne Kanter .... Dr. Berman
Julie Gordon .... Karen
Jayne Bentzen .... Julie
Bill Cakmis .... Maddy's Date
Dana Drescher .... Little Girl
James Farrell .... Artie
Ed French
William Fuller .... Brad
Gerry Lou .... Beth
Chad Montgomery .... Gregg
Lisa Randall .... Andrea
Doug Weiser .... Jackie
Nightmare at Shadows Woods is an obscure ‘80s slasher film that was a lot better than I was expecting. Here‘s a video I bought for $2 at Cash Converters because it looked like it cost about as much to make. The cover was unbelievably cheesy (as you can see above), it was about an evil twin, and its tagline was "Double the Pleasure. Double the Death." And whoever wrote the synopsis on the back of the video had no real grasp of grammar or punctuation. I was hoping this person also wrote the script.
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This blood-soaked man would like
to apologise for the cheap pictures
scanned off the video box. "I'm
sorry" he says with his last gasp. |
Nightmare at Shadow Woods, while definitely silly, is no crap classic. I found it pretty entertaining, if in the forgettable way of ‘80s slasher films. The film opens at a drive-in theatre, where Ted Raimi appears for about 30 seconds selling condoms in the men’s toilets. Twins Todd and Terry are sleeping in the back of a station wagon, while their mother Maddy ( Louise Lasser) is making out with some guy. The twins sneak out. Terry picks up an axe and kills a guy who’s in the middle of rooting his girlfriend. Then he smears some blood on Todd’s face and puts the axe in his hand. Hapless Todd, who just stands there and takes this treatment, gets sent to a mental institution. Ten years later Terry is home at Shadow Woods, some sort of upscale woodland housing complex, for Thanksgiving. At Thanksgiving dinner they get a phone call from the mental institution letting them know that Todd has escaped and that he may be heading to Shadow Woods. A search party from the institution comes, which consists of Todd’s doctor and her doofus assistant. These two split up and get killed as you’d expect and they deserve.
With Todd returning to Shadow Woods, Terry has his alibi back. He goes on the killing spree he’s been waiting for. Wandering around Shadow Woods, he kills people off with a machete in satisfyingly gory ways. Now you’d think with an escaped killer on his way, and bodies piling up someone may call the police, but this is an ‘80s slasher film and there are a million laboured reasons why they shouldn't be called. So Terry is free to wander around killing people.
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A pixealted woman in tacky lingerie.
Reminds me of Leisure Suit Larry. |
Maddy spends the bulk of the film either being so nervous about Todd’s arrival that she cleans, drinks, or eats, or constantly ringing the office of her fiancé Fred, the manager of Shadow Woods. Despite getting no answer and the office being about a minute’s walk away, she keeps ringing again and again. One scene of her tearfully ringing the operator to get the number checked is particularly irritating. Why is Terry murdering people? Most slasher films have someone avenging a past injustice, even if they aren’t picking the most appropriate victims. Terry seems to be killing people because that’s what evil twins do. There is a vague hint that there’s some sort of jealousy for the mother’s affection going on, but it’s too vague to count as explaining his motivation. But Maddy carries on in some scenes like there’s something deeper going on. What we have is a mother who acts like there’s some great symbolic pain, and a murdering son who doesn’t.
Another thing that bugged me, and if your going to make a slasher film you should take note of this, was that a lot of the dead meat characters looked quite similar. Too many girls with blond hair and guys with brown hair. More than once I found myself thinking that someone who walked on screen was the person who got killed in the previous scene. And the tits on offer are not huge in either size or number. If your making a slasher film take note of that as well (and send me a screener copy please).
 |
The Rorschach test was
disturbingly vivid. |
Generic bit players aside, the two main characters are pretty good actors. Louise Lasser has appeared in several Woody Allen films, as well as Mystery Men, and Requiem for a Dream. Here, though, she gives a performance that is well acted but badly written. Mark Soper, who has most recently appeared in Swordfish and White Oleander, does a good job of differentiating Todd and Terry without making it gimmicky. Only the lack of a strong motivation for Todd’s murders make the resulting character weaker than the acting. And the screenwriter also wrote Zapped! and Zapped Again!, which may or may not mean anything to you. I wouldn’t recommend Nightmare at Shadow Woods to anyone who wasn’t obsessed with ‘80s slasher films or evil twins. So I’ll probably (sadly) be lending my two dollar video tape to most of the people I know. I hope you, dear reader, are luckier.
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